Peter Kenyon - Community Builder and the Bank of Ideas (Part 2)

 Peter explains that towns were not built by governments but created by people coming together to pool resources. Community development is teasing out of people what they care about, using conversation and asset mapping as tools.  
 
He’s convinced that Churches have played a significant role in generating social capital and therefore earned the right to speak in public conversations about the future. But they need to set aside differences and mobilise their accumulated resources. Peter speaks from fresh experience of getting the churches of Coonabarabran to do this.

Peter Kenyon has probably done more to resurrect dying towns in Australia than anyone I know. His early years were spent in remote areas of Western Australia where he witnessed the exodus of young people to the cities and the shrinkage of Australia’s small Inland towns. He estimates 70% are dying.
 
Peter’s passion is to act as a community builder reigniting hope by getting locals to open their eyes to the human and physical resources they have on hand. This vision has taken him all over our country and to remote towns across the world. I know how effective he’s been because his visit to Bourke in the early 1990’s triggered regeneration in our community that had almost given up hope.
 
Peter inspired me and I’m sure he’ll do the same for you. I caught up with him at Dubbo Airport in transit from a ten-day program in Coonabarabran. I found he’d lost none of his drive after 40-plus years on the road. Here in Part one he explains his basic strategy of hosting conversations when he visited Bourke. He’s one of the best storytellers I’ve heard.
 
Peter explains that towns were not built by governments but created by people coming together to pool resources. Community development is teasing out of people what they care about, using conversation and asset mapping as tools.  
 
He’s convinced that Churches have played a significant role in generating social capital and therefore earned the right to speak in public conversations about the future. But they need to set aside differences and mobilise their accumulated resources. Peter speaks from fresh experience of getting the churches of Coonabarabran to do this.