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What Do Community Enablers Do?

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MariaPCC 15 July 2026

Community Enablers (CEs) help people to engage in shared initiatives that bind them together as comm-unities across boundaries. They ‘hold spaces’ for people to do things for themselves. Human beings naturally self-organise into competing sub-groups, and CEs provide mechanisms that help different groups to positively interact. 

CEs are generalists who think holistically. They draw on bio-psycho-social-spiritual-economic-environmental aspects of health to advance the life stories of all involved. They see death as part of life; and quality of LIFE as part of quality of LIVES – families, friends, networks. 

CEs develop whole systems as well as individuals. They remind people that they must make sense of what they see in the light of other perspectives. Policy-makers are CEs when they devise systems that empower more than control, and encourage people to take responsibility for actions that synchronise with those of others, to have a greater effect for good. 

CEs are opportunists. Their insights, experiences, contacts, and abilities to ‘feel into the skin’ of others help them to see opportunities in every situation, and use difficult situations to make good things happen. 

CEs are action researchers. Evidence, facts, AI, guidelines and all perspectives are snapshots of stories-in-evolution – ‘food for thought’ rather than absolute truth to be blindly followed. CEs help stakeholders to reflect on the significance of these data to their personal situations, and also for others. CEs apply this thinking in all aspects of their work, to help good stories to evolve. 4th Generation Evaluation does this, by developing Neighbourhoods as comparative case studies where stakeholders reflect together on data and use it to inform their plans for the next stage. Including data that is wanted by politicians helps them to see the connection between complex collaborations and other desirable things, like urgent hospital admissions, hospital bed days, place of death, diabetes control, social cohesion…

Paul Thomas, COIN

A summary of Feb 2026 COIN Discussion

See as a video at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fXAeZpA8uI

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