Collective Impact Peers Share Their Experience

Posted on April 10, 2017
By Sylvia Cheuy

As a Learning Institute, Tamarack is committed to making the work of community change easier and more effective.  We do this by teaching, writing and both hosting face-to-face and online learning opportunities to provide leaders with the knowledge and inspiration they need for success in their community change efforts.  In 2016 we were proud to welcome more than 22,000 learners to engage with us. 

Over the past fifteen years, we have learned that, true community change occurs when citizens and organizations adopt a new way of thinking and working together.  We see our role as providing our members with access to the latest thinking, knowledge, and resources delivered in accessible and creative ways. This can be challenging since knowledge is dynamic and always evolving.  That is why we have always placed a high value on the co-generation of knowledge – collaborating with our members in the field – to more effectively link theory and practice. 

That is why we are excited that the curriculum for Tamarack’s newest multi-day learning event – Collective Impact 3.0 – included a call for practitioners to join the event’s faculty team: sharing the lessons they are learning on the journey towards community change and impact. We received several very strong proposals from Collective Impact practitioners from across Canada and around the world.  Below we have profiled just four of the fourteen peer presentations that we are thrilled to be featuring as part of the curriculum of the Collective Impact 3.0 Learning Event in Kitchener in May:

  • Jerrold McGrath – A Design Approach to Collective Impact -- Jerrold’s presentation draws upon lessons learned by the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity as they prototyped over 50 programs in 3 years to understand effective ways for diverse communities to tackle complex problems. The learnings from this work led to the creation of a design approach, called MDA, which proved useful in convening and accelerating collective initiatives. The MDA approach includes: the reframing of complex problems; the suspension of existing system constraints; and, help to look at problems through a lens that was not shaped by existing practices. Once the solution space had been reshaped, new solutions could be traced.
  • Marilyn Hamilton – Imagine Durant: Place Caring & Place Making in the Human Hive – This workshop profiles the work of Imagine Durant (Oklahoma): a community based initiative for creating a unified vision for the future, and the strategies to make it happen. The presenters will share how key sponsors from the private sector and indigenous Choctaw culture worked together to attract an active Board.  They will also demonstrate how, by mapping values and reimagining the city, the vision of Durant was repositioned with developers, the school district, university students, Main Street stakeholders, artists, business owners, farmers and banks.
  • Chris Thompson Collaborative Leadership: The Fund for Our Economic Future – This Case Study will highlight Chris’ nine years of experience as Director of Regional Engagement for the Fund for Our Economic Future – a collaborative in Northeast Ohio focused on improved job creation, job preparation and job access outcomes. In particular Chris’ work highlights the distinct form of leadership required by successful collaboratives. Those trained in organizational leadership often struggle as collaborative leaders.  That is because, within a collaborative there are no clear lines of authority, and partners are independent of one another.  Chris will share resources and tools to assess and strengthen the effective collaborative leadership skills needed to influence the collaborative process and catalyze enduring, positive change.    
  • Margaret Coshan – Healthy Neighbours: Developing a Collective Voice – This workshop highlights the work of Neighbours Helping Neighbours a collaborative led by a group of grassroots residents living in Toronto’s St. James Town neighbourhood. The group’s ability to develop a collective resident voice is remarkable given that the St. James Town neighbourhood includes 30,000 residents from 67+ cultures living in one square kilometer.  This collaborative’s approach has developed a community model for screening and health programs that relies on neighbour connections to effectively reaches residents at risk of chronic disease. 

The profiles above offer just a taste of the rich learning to be had when practitioners and thought-leaders meet to learn from one another, and together deepen our understanding of Collective Impact as an emerging field of practice.  We hope you can join us! 

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Topics:
Collective Impact, Sylvia Cheuy


Sylvia Cheuy

By Sylvia Cheuy

Sylvia is a Consulting Director of the Tamarack Institute’s Collective Impact Idea Area and also supports Tamarack’s Community Engagement Idea Area. She is passionate about community change and what becomes possible when residents and various sector leaders share an aspirational vision for their future. Sylvia believes that when the assets of residents and community are recognized and connected they become powerful drivers of community change. Sylvia is an internationally recognized community-builder and trainer. Over the past five years, much of Sylvia’s work has focused on building awareness and capacity in the areas of Collective Impact and Community Engagement throughout North America.

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