The Community Builder's Journal: Guided reflections and experiments for your community building journey

Designed as a yearlong guided workbook, The Community Builder’s Journal invites you to experiment with building community in your street, neighbourhood, workplace, or wherever life places you. Part reflective journal, part practical guide, this book offers weekly ideas, stories, questions, and invitations to try something new. Organised into twelve monthly themes, it supports a year-long rhythm of deepening awareness and purposeful action. You’ll explore how to build small groups, sustain collective energy, and respond to conflict. You’ll reflect on what gets in the way, be it personal doubt, social fear, or structural barriers, and find grounded ways forward. Through diverse lenses - including social, economic, cultural, ecological, and political - you’ll reimagine what’s possible in the places and communities you care about. Whether used on your own, in a small group, or within a broader community of practice, this journal offers not just ideas, but encouragement to live them. Plus, each month includes a recipe from the Nundah Community Enterprise Cooperative―a small reminder that community is also made around shared tables.

Peter Westoby has been involved in development practice for over thirty years, working as a grassroots practitioner, facilitator and scholar in diverse contexts such as Australia, PNG, the Philippines, Vanuatu, India, South Africa and Uganda. He is currently teaches at Murdoch University in Perth, and is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Development Support, University of the Free State, South Africa.

Dave Andrews, his wife Ange, and their family have lived and worked in intentional communities with marginalised groups of people in Australia, Afghanistan, India and Nepal for over fifty years. He is an elder emeritus of Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor, and an author of numerous books and articles.

Howard Buckley began his journey in community work in the 1980s, honing his skills through voluntary work with young people and refugees in a suburb of Brisbane, and joining with his friends to establish a vocation in community work.

Following studies in social science, community development, and environmental management, Rachael has also worked in community development and advocacy roles that centre lived experience, amplify people’s voices, and influence both local action and public policy. Her passion lies at the intersection of social justice and environmental sustainability, and exploring how healing for individuals, communities, and the planet are deeply interconnected.

Kirsty Leigh works at Nundah Community Enterprise Co-operative (NCEC) to create meaningful work for people with diverse abilities. She is also the author of recipes inspired by popular dishes created and sold at Nundah Co-operative’s Hospitality Enterprises.