Citizen Network
The Citizen's Networks' purpose is to help create a world where everyone matters by advancing citizenship for all and supporting the creation of inclusive communities.
About our work
Citizen Network is a global network with over 200 groups members and 800 individual members. It was launched in Wellington, New Zealand in 2016 and it has members in 30 countries. Its purpose is to help create a world where everyone matters by advancing citizenship for all and supporting the creation of inclusive communities. The network is supported by a non-profit cooperative registered in Helsinki, Finland. Citizen Network was founded by the Centre for Welfare Reform, which is based in Sheffield, Yorkshire. In 2022 the Centre was renamed Citizen Network Research and it coordinates publication, communication and the on-going learning and development process for the network.
The change we want to see
Citizen Network wants to help create a world where everyone of us is recognised as a unique individual, with our own gifts to share with the world and at the same time everyone is treated as being absolutely equal in value. This involves changes at every level: within ourselves, our communities and our social, economic and democratic systems. We believe that at the heart of making these changes is learning how to support each other as equals – by peer support and cooperation. We also need to apply these principles to tackling the urgent challenges we face today: to create diverse and inclusive neighbourhoods; to increase economic security and enabling welfare systems; to take proper care of the natural world and to create a genuinely democratic governance – locally and globally.
Our main line of work Lankelly Chase is supporting
Citizen Network works to connect people, groups and networks who are working on different projects in different places, but who share a common commitment to equality and the value of human diversity. Its goal is to help create deeper and more radical social change by connecting together different movements which all share in these same values, finding common ground, building shared platforms, finding a bigger audience and learning more efficiently together about what helps us tackle the problems we face. Citizen Network creates a shared space for citizen action and strategic change, connecting the personal, the local and the global. We’ve established a range of interconnected networks to support our goals, including: UBI Lab Network, the Neighbourhood Democracy Network, the Self-Directed Support Network and CitizenFest.