The Community Development in the Italian Third Sector.

Community Development (CD) is a process to favour the socio-economic development of communities through the engagement of citizens, social workers, public authorities or non-profit organizations. Over the last decades, theories and practices of the CD have spread all over the world. Italy has a consistent "Third Sector" (TS) with a long-standing tradition; Despite the absence of a well-defined area of the Italian CD, in recent years, particularly within the so-called Third Sector (TS), there has been to develop characterizes of the CD. This paper aims to theorize the features of the CD in the Italian TS. The research engages representatives of 23 organizations—from neighbourhood associations to foundations and national bodies—and investigates through qualitative semi-structured interviews how they promote and conceptualize CD processes. Through the framework of international theories, it is possible to define the field of the CD in the Italian TS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]