Ethical Fields partners with communities, governments, businesses and NGOs to implement community wealth building across Australia. 

Community wealth building provides a set of principles, strategies and tools to enable government, industry, business and community to:

• Empower local people and place – by shifting control and decision-making of the local economy to the people that value and rely on it. Your local people, community, business owners and local employees.
• Generate wealth for a local area and its communities – by growing the overall economy as well as the retention and distribution of as much wealth as possible within that area and to the community.
• Increase local and broad ownership – by empowering all local people to invest in and hold a financial and controlling stake in the economy and local assets of all kinds.
• Make financial power work for local places and people – by leveraging local capital and building local financial structures and systems led and owned by the community.
• Create regenerative industries and jobs that are anchored to place and people – by designing and preferencing industries, enterprises, jobs and supply chains that systematically reinvest in and regenerate the local community.
• Reduce inequity and improve collective wellbeing and local resilience – via individual asset building and equitable wealth distribution and diversification.
• Strengthen whole regional systems – by creating systems, institutions, enterprises, infrastructure and cultures that reinforce community ownership, leadership and wealth building.

Who is CWB for

All levels of society can implement community wealth building. It provides practical tools and approaches within the control and influence of local community and community organisations, local business, government and non-grovernment organisations. 

For communities that face economic and social challenges, community wealth building can build capacity and capability among local people and organisations to undertake locally relevant economic development and transform their regions’ economic and social wellbeing, especially through future challenges. It can stimulate economic activity, create local jobs and build a more stable economy.

For communities that already have a strong local economy, community wealth building can give residents more control and influence in local economic and social matters, promote economic and social resilience and self-sufficiency, increase individual and community wealth and prosperity, build economic & social equality and ensure the local economy achieves the needs and aspirations of the local community now and into the future.