Community Direct is the social economy enterprise of the Women’s Resource and Development Agency (WRDA). Social enterprises are businesses that aim to make a profit in order to fulfil social aims such as creating employment, supporting local economies or providing training and services to local communities.

Community Direct’s aim is to provide statutory, voluntary and private organisations with quality products and training services that will help them tackle the health and social needs of people and communities in Northern Ireland.  The training programmes are delivered by Community Facilitators, also known as peer educators, trained by WRDA.

The idea for Community Direct originated from an extremely successful project that the WRDA was involved in to tackle the worryingly low uptake of breast and cervical screening invitations by women in the North and West Belfast Trust area.   The Trust was keen to find a way to reach marginalised women who by and large don’t respond to standard letters inviting them to go for screening.  A project was designed that aimed to combine the resources of the community development sector with the health sector. 

This pioneering model proved that a community development agency could work with health professionals and local people to achieve improved levels of awareness, thereby contributing to improved health in the community, particularly in disadvantaged areas. 

WRDA has now used this successful community facilitation model as a basis to establish Community Direct.  Training resource packs have been developed in conjunction with experts, all of which have been designed to further the Investing for Health agenda and are delivered by WRDA Community Facilitators.  These are women who share similar life experiences to the groups that statutory and voluntary organisations often find most difficult to target and serve. 

Community Direct Company Limited is a company registered in Northern Ireland with Company Number NI056728