About AIEB
The All Ireland Endorsement Body for Community Work Education and Training (AIEB) was established in 2010. It operates on an all-island basis to support and promote community development, while ensuring high standards of quality and practice. AIEB reflects established approaches to quality assurance and provides formal recognition of excellence in community work education and training.
Alignment with All Ireland Standards for Community Work
The OCN NI Level 2 Award in Community Development is informed by the Community Development National Occupational Standards (CD NOS) and the All Ireland Standards for Community Work. It embeds core community work values throughout the programme.
The course promotes:
- Social justice through exploration of inequality, disadvantage, and social change
- Equality and inclusion by encouraging participation from diverse communities and valuing different experiences and perspectives
- Collective action by supporting learners to collaborate with communities to identify priorities and develop responses
- Empowerment through skills development, confidence building, and active community participation
- Participation through learner-centred and community-focused approaches to programme delivery
- Reflective practice using structured self-assessment, learning logs, and personal development planning
At the outset of the programme, learners complete a skills audit and Personal Development Plan (PDP) aligned to the All Ireland Standards. These are reviewed throughout the course and revisited at completion to support reflection on individual learning and development.
Practical activities require learners to apply community work principles across areas such as community profiling, engagement, participation, governance, and community action. This ensures that learners not only understand the standards, but can also demonstrate their application in practice.
Recognition of Quality
Anna Clarke, Quality Standards Coordinator at AIEB, said:
It’s very valuable to have NICVA’s Community development award at level 2 approved by AIEB for recognition – it is a demonstration of the quality of the programme and the way in which the community development content in particular, contributes to promoting understanding of the purpose and the values of the community development. It is mapped to the All Ireland standards for community work.
We would like to congratulate NICVA on securing recognised status for the programme and are very pleased to see that the programme is going to be running several times a year for the next few years. We look forward to continued involvement with NICVA.
