Faith-based Support as a Relational Approach to Community Development: Legacies and Impacts of The Salvation Army’s ‘No. 47 Project’ in the Ivanhoe Public Housing Estate

This report reviews the theologically informed community development practice of a Salvation Army project in the Ivanhoe Public Housing Estate, in Macquarie Park in Sydney’s northern suburbs. From 2001-2018, the No. 47 Project contributed to building both a community house and a community. The research reported here was co-funded by The Salvation Army and Macquarie University. It worked with residents of the estate to produce a short film that documents and celebrates the community, and to examine the way that The Salvation Army’s community house on the estate operated. Using extensive field interviews with community members, Salvation Army officers, staff and volunteers, and others drawn into the relational network of this innovative and successful venture, the report considers how relationality in community development work and a sophisticated and theologically-informed commitment to living with, being part of and serving the community with a generous and unconditional welcome nurtured transformation of the Ivanhoe Estate from a fragile, dangerous and vulnerable residential area to a vibrant, confident and generous community. Residents spoke confidently about their sense of belonging together and of being a community. They used the word love easily to describe their sense of place and their feeling for their community. And they were quick to identify the No. 47 Project as the foundation for the transformation.
The No. 47 Project was, therefore, successful as a community development activity led by The Salvation Army.
This report also recognises the No. 47 Project was significant not only for the local residents, but also for the wider Macquarie Park neighbourhood, as it created links into a wide range of charitable, industrial, commercial and education interests across the district. It also has considerable significance for The Salvation Army as it transitions into a new organisational structure in Australia. The theological inspiration for the No. 47 Project was framed in terms of loving people the way Jesus loved people, and its practice reflected high standards of professional practice in a very unconventional institutional setting. We consider how the lessons of this innovative project, which was initiated in very different social, policy and administrative circumstances nearly twenty years ago, might be applied in the contemporary work of The Salvation Army as a modern, professional human services organisation.
The development of relationships of connection and belonging-together shaped community amongst fragile and vulnerable residents in a complex urban setting. Our research concludes that building relational, rather than transactional, community development practices to bring theologically- informed practice and practically-engaged theology together offers valuable guidance for The Salvation Army’s professional human services beyond the particularities of the original project setting. In accepting the theological principle of imago Dei as the foundation for its practice in the No. 47 Project, The Salvation Army supported the local congregation, staff and officers to play a role as ‘professional neighbours’. The approach prioritized listening, witnessing and simply loving people and place as the foundation for building relationships of acceptance and support through which community flourished. These elements of success became hallmarks of the Macquarie Park Community House and offer valuable lessons of much wider relevance for faith-based communities of practice in delivering faith-based human services.