OUR STARTING POINT

We believe that a holistic approach is necessary to achieve even relatively small changes in a community.
This is because communities are dynamic living organisms and they are resistant to one-dimensional interventions.
So,  our work plans are based on the potential, needs and opportunities in 4 main areas.

EMPLOYMENT
EDUCATION
NEIGHBORHOOD
COMMUNITY LIFE

Communities are complex living organisms. Each community has an eco-system and an ego-system. These systems inter-act with each other, shape what is done, how and with whom. They determine whose voices are heard and whose are not. Understanding each community’s eco and ego systems is a fundamental part of our intervention approach.

UNDERSTANDING ECO AND EGO SYSTEMS

All communities, even those that are striving to fight decline, have under-utilized human assets, untapped potential, and pride in their narrative. BTF works to activate these assets, and re-establish an effective 3-way partnerships between residents,  the local council and national government.

CREATING EFFECTIVE 3-WAY PARTNERSHIPS

THE BTF WORKFLOW

We have taken the Agile workflow from industry and adapted it to suit the dynamics of community change. Each change leads to another and another..
There is a general direction of travel but no pre-determined outcome.

COMMUNITY ANALYSIS

BTF incorporates grounded, state of the art analysis tools such as GEAR, POISE and PCB. It constructs an in-depth picture of the collective and individual strengths and potential.READ MORE

These define intervention paths and help set proper objectives and success definitions. Additionally, these tools allow an on-going verification of action-result correlations that ensures the ability to dynamically redefine objectives according to progress.

IDENTIFY POTENTIAL

Successful, and most importantly, sustainable changes should address the needs and sensitivities of actors coming from three main arenas; civic, bureaucratic and political.  READ MORE

Ensuring this relies a lot on mentoring these actors and organizations to view their objectives as common.

TRUST MANAGEMENT

Trust is the most fundamental resource for social networking and community development. READ MORE

Addressing trust in terms of a social coin allows planning and the allocation of attention to different actors’ interests and objectives, in pursuit of enlarging the trust resource in the general community.

CHANGE FACILITATION

Change Facilitation is the ability to nourish change, and relies on authentic community potential. Therefore change cannot be imposed. It has to be identified, facilitated and correlated to combined interests.

CAPACITY BUILDING

Capacity building is the actualization of ability. The objective is to create sustainable capacity that is based on a mutual vision and shared interest.

OWNERSHIP

Ownership is a sense of consensus on leadership and direction while understanding and perusing the benefit of synergetic action.

FADE OUT

The stage of fading out is a crucial stage in facilitation. It is defined and organized together with relevant actors and the due setting is unique for each intervention.

See each location for more about our work.