Community Capacity Builders is a South Australian Social Enterprise that has been operating for over 20 years. Its focus areas are:
Building the capacity of communities to address wicked problems,
Building the capacity of active citizens and social entrepreneurs to create systems change,
Creating an enabling environment for autistic social entrepreneurship,
Translating research into social innovations,
Undertaking systemic advocacy - advocacy that focuses on changing systems.
Our core values are:
Build capacity: it’s in our name! We focus on building the capacity of others to create change.
Evidence based: all of our products and processes are based on peer-reviewed research.
Continuous learning: we pride ourselves on continually adapting our products and processes to reflect the latest research.
Self-determination: we value equity, inclusion, and self-determination for all.
Dr Sharon Zivkovic is the Founder and CEO of Community Capacity Builders. Sharon has been supporting communities to build their capacity for over 25 years. In 2001 she received the Enterprising Woman of the Year Award for 'helping to make communities more enterprising, taking advantage of their communal strength'. After working in economic and community development roles on a number of urban regeneration projects, in 2004 Sharon started Community Capacity Builders. Community Capacity Builders' first initiatives were a community leadership program delivered in partnership with local government and a social entrepreneurship course for universities.
During her PhD, Sharon developed a framework for system transitions informed by complexity science. In 2012 Sharon received the Best Overall Paper Award at the International Social Innovation Research Conference for a paper on this framework, in 2014 she wire framed a software tool for tracking system transitions that was based on the framework, and in 2015 developed a Complex Systems Leadership Program to support the use of the tool by practitioners. This tool has been used by governments and universities.
Sharon received a Fresh Scientist Award in 2016 for her work in addressing societies most wicked problems with complexity science, and in 2021 Sharon's work in Applied Complexity (Social Entrepreneurship & Wicked Problems) was recognised on the Map of the Complexity Sciences (see below). In recent years, Sharon's complexity science research has highlighted how wicked human services problems need to be addressed differently to wicked socio-ecological problems.
As a proudly autistic social innovator and entrepreneur, Sharon established a Centre for Autistic Social Entrepreneurship in 2023. This Centre has the overarching mission of creating an enabling environment for autistic social innovators and social entrepreneurs.
