The 2004 strategic planning process opened a new direction for CLP, giving focused attention to practice and reflection on practice. This has had a profound affect on the manner in which CLP approaches its work, leading to an open ended commitment to “walking with communities towards the realisation of the choices that they make’. CLP thus opened itself to the politics of the poor and its practice is guided by an active solidarity with people in the struggles that they define and take forward on their own terms. CLP also broadened its focus to take in the relationship of people – land – church, taking up people’s issues in relation to land – whether rural or urban – and interrogating the relationship of the church to those issues – whether the local church of the people themselves or the institutional church.

In 2007, CLP identified animation as its core practice. This involves an iterative process that applies the learning and action cycle in people’s specific situations and with the intention that they mobilise themselves to act to change that situation in ways that they decide. CLP has a clear and firm organisational commitment to this core practice. Consequent to this, people’s movements, organised groups of the marginalised, and those acting in solidarity from within institutional spaces are the key groups with whom CLP interacts.