The mission of Brighter Communities Worldwide is to work in partnership with communities to deliver programmes that enrich their lives and help create better futures for them and their families.

People are central to our approach to community development which is based on community led solutions with local partners. We work in partnership with communities to deliver programmes that enrich their lives and help create better futures for them and their families.

One of the key events in our annual calendar is when we invite representatives of our partners to come together, share learning, evaluate our programmes, our partnership and plan our next steps together. On March 6^th and 7^th, 130 representatives of Ministries, Communities and Partners from across 4 sub-counties gathered together for a partnership seminar. The energy, enthusiasm and commitment to bringing real change and creating brighter futures was incredible.

The residential seminar was held over 2 days in Londiani and the participants took part in sessions using various methods such as role play, visualisation, reflection, feedback discussions and presentations.

• Seminar questions circulated in advance so that input is gathered from all members of the communities represented, describing the changes and challenges of the previous year along with their current needs.
• Updates from Brighter Communities Worldwide staff on the work in their individual programme areas and activities planned for the coming months. 
• Exploring and describing the most significant change that has taken place in their communities as a result of working with Brighter Communities Worldwide. For example – access to safe drinking water.
• Summarising the most significant external environmental changes that happened in the previous 12 months. For example – rural roads construction.
• Reviewing a standard of living index that was developed by Brighter Communities Worldwide and the community to measure the impact of different interventions on their health, education, standard of housing, food and income levels.
• A partnership health check where the core elements of good partnerships were explored and the participants were invited to score their partnership with Brighter Communities Worldwide as a means of reviewing and strengthening the working relationship.
• Presentations on our new strategic plan for 2019 to 2023 which sets out a pathway for sustained growth for the organisation.
• Exercise on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) exploring where changes in their communities through working with Brighter Communities Worldwide are helping to achieve the SDGs.
• Prioritising their needs for 2019 to 2020 working from the pre-seminar questionnaire that the communities had worked on. Overall access to safe drinking water and youth employment came out as the main priorities across the region.
• Visualising where they would like to see their communities be in five year’s time – groups looked at what their communities would do, who they would partner with, what challenges they might face, what innovations they might put in place, how they would fund projects, how much time it would take and how Brighter Communities Worldwide could support them in achieving their plans.

The annual partnership seminars are the most valuable opportunity to bring people together to listen to each other, share and exchange ideas. Discussions continued into the night and relationships were strengthened and new connections made which all lead to creating better futures together.