Roger Saunders
Roger has worked in social housing and regeneration for 25 years. In the 1970s and early 80s, he worked in community and political theatre as a writer, actor and director. After a period developing and working in the housing co-operative movement, he joined Priority Estates Project in 1985. In the 1980s he was part of the PEP team developing local housing management on difficult to let estates.
After PEP became independent of government in 1989, Roger carried out a wide range of projects for local authorities, housing associations, and community groups. During the ‘90s, he developed and co-ordinated a government-sponsored national programme of training for residents, consisting of around 35 events each year.
Community development and empowerment have been a major part of Roger’s work. He has developed a variety of community-led structures – including neighbourhood agreements, community associations, multi-agency forums and contract boards. He is experienced in participatory methods for engaging people, such as PLA (Participatory Learning and Action).
From the mid-90s, Roger worked increasingly on local economic development, in partnership with European organisations, and led the development of a new model known as Resident Services Organisations (RSOs). He subsequently worked with partners to pilot the approach – setting up community-based organisations to employ local people to deliver local services in their own neighbourhoods.
Roger was Chief Executive of PEP from 2001 to 2005, also working as a Neighbourhood Renewal Adviser to the government. He has an MSc in Management Development and Training, is a qualified NLP Practitioner, and is a member of the Human Givens Institute. He has published a wide range of reports and guides on housing, resident services organisations, community involvement and inter-personal skills.
In 2005 he set up Choosing Change, which aims to empower people and communities.
Whats On
Choosing Change currently offers 4 types of training:
In-house courses for community groups are courses that can be booked by your organisation, and we will come to you and run the course locally.
In-house courses for staff and managers are courses about communication and empowerment, designed to help staff give of their best and get the best from their organisations. Again, we come to you.
Open courses at Trafford Hall are courses we run at the National Communities Resource Centre in Chester.
Open courses for InSTEP
are courses we run at various venues around the country