An early step in setting up on online community or centre is to address the 'why' question... or put it another way, what are the needs or problems in the community that the new facility would address?

This needs assessment can range from a major survey or other form of study, or a quick brainstorm in a workshop.

Meanwhile, here is a quick way to get a group to identify community needs as they see them. The group might be local residents, business people, public officials or any other key interest. This technique is used in association with the projects game.

Identifying local issues with a group

1 Invite the group to call out key issues for their neighbourhood - what's good, what is a problem. (At a conference when demonstrating this technique, you can ask people to 'invent' a neighbourhood... ask whether it is rural or urban, how big etc and ask for a fictitious name)

2 Spilt into groups of not more than seven, each with a piece of flip chart paper and pen.

3 Ask each group, in the light of the previous discussion, to fill in the sustainability model shown in the diagram below. After 10-15 minutes discussion, each group should fill in the model, providing a graphic description of the needs of the area.

4 Ask each group to report back, and then negotiate a shared view.... a version of the model that everyone can agree on.

If you run a workshop like this with different interests (residents, businesses, officials), you may get different perceptions of community needs and so different models. If you do that, consider bring everyone together to share differences and areas of agreement.

The value of the workshop technique is that after a discussion of needs, people feel they 'own' the issues more than they would the results of a study. However, the workshop could be a good starting point for a more detailed study.

Sustainability model This simple mode,l used to assess the present and future states of the area, allows different interests in a community to communicate about matters of sustainability. The columns represent The Environment, The Local Community and the Local Economy. These are assessed as being Robust, Stable or Fragile and the diagram shaded accordingly. The diagram on the right shows an area where the Environment and Community are Stable but the Economy is Fragile. Arrows are used to indicate trends. In this case the Environment is becoming more Stable while the Economy is becoming less Stable, and Community could go either way.