We in Belgrave Baheno Women's Organisation had a vision in our minds that we were not prepared to let go of. That is the first rule of community-led regeneration.
People see regeneration as a funding issue, as a destination. However, as I told the third National Regeneration Convention recently, for the people living and working in those communities, it is about a life-long journey.

We at the Belgrave Baheno Women's Organisation have always believed that every community is full of entrepreneurs and leaders – individuals who are able to make things happen if they're given the opportunity.

We are realising that the sustaining factors of our regeneration effort are the trust, respect and credibility we have within the community. It is about integrity and holding firm to our values.

When we distilled our vision, we came to the conclusion that it was about humanity – about basic human rights. It should not matter whether you're black or white, old or young, a man or a woman – there is, as Nelson Mandela says, "an inherent greatness and an infinite potential in all of us". That is what we believe in.

Vision and leadership have been very important to us but there was no meeting of minds in terms of what the community needed and what politicians and other people within statutory agencies thought was required. Unless you have congruence, though, regeneration is a fallacy.

For a community organisation to come to the table with statutory agencies and other private developers, it needs resources.

We were always the poor cousins of the partnership because we did not have the power, we did not have the leverage and we certainly did not have the finances.

Voluntary organisations have often been lured into the bear pit by statutory agencies and set up against one another because the statutory agencies have not understood, earned the respect, or been prepared to put in the time required to build trust and relationships with communities.

Community consultation has been seen as the answer to all the ills within society: that somehow, if you give the community a voice – whether in health or anywhere else – and you allow the agenda to be set from the bottom-up, suddenly things will change.

There was no meeting of minds in terms of what the community needed and what politicians and statutory agencies thought

Actually, they do not change that easily, because the mechanisms that drive the resourcing issues are still maintained within very powerful organisations.

The opportunity for you to be able to influence what is going on, to be able to resource yourself so you can enter the arena in an informed way and have some real say in that arena, is very limited.

Statutory organisations need to change their approach drastically. A vision can only be delivered when there is leadership. Leadership can only be provided when there is buy-in, when there is a consensus.

Once you have visionary leadership on both sides, you immediately have potential for a win-win situation.

What can we do to facilitate the development of a vision within the communities we belong to? What can we do to achieve a meeting of minds so that the buy-in is not one of compromise but one of congruence?

How do we develop a leadership within communities that allows people to articulate and pursue their vision unrelentingly?

For us, community regeneration is not about a funding program, an end point, or partnership. It is not even about a pot of money; it is a journey.