Community development involves working with people, places and various interests and roles. The processes involved in community development work embraces the idea of action research through community empowerment leading to improving quality of life, managing change and promoting vibrant communities.  

A useful reference to describe the role of community development work is to provide a conceptual understanding of community development (CD) and the work of CD practitioners. Two key roles include serving as facilitators to a range of community conversations about information and knowledge levels on key island issues (process expertise) and to help community residents, government and non-government organizations address how to deal with those issues (content expertise).