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Sylvia Cheuy

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.

Recent Posts

Creating Community for Changemakers

Posted by Sylvia Cheuy on December 6, 2023

 

Why is a network of peers invaluable to the work of communitychange? As our world seeks fresh solutions after the Covid-19 pandemic, the focus is shifting towards collaborative strategies. Embracing a collective effort, these approaches aim to create and nurture shared solutions for intricate community challenges.

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Five Community-Driven Pathways for Systems Change

Posted by Sylvia Cheuy on August 2, 2023

Front-line wisdom to make systems change happen better and more often

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Harnessing Stories for Shared Wisdom & Community Action in Palm Beach

Posted by Sylvia Cheuy on July 13, 2020

I have long been curious about the different roles that stories and narratives can play in the work of community change. I have seen how one individual story, powerfully told, has the power to instantly engage people and offer clarity and understanding of a complex issue in ways that well-researched data and analysis alone cannot accomplish.

I  know that communities, like individuals, have stories about themselves that can both limit and inspire their hopes for the future. These community narratives – about who we are; how things go; what’s possible for us here – shape collective thinking and can play a role in determining the future. Uncovering current shared community narratives and inviting community members to co-create new, compelling narratives that are rooted in their shared hopes for the future can be a powerful lever for community change.

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Simple Tools to Unleash Collective Creativity

Posted by Sylvia Cheuy on May 17, 2019

As the challenges facing communities become more complex and the importance of effective collaboration across sectors and perspectives increases, the need to find simple and effective ways for people to think and learn together has never been greater.

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Insights into the Work of Authentic Community Engagement

Posted by Sylvia Cheuy on March 22, 2019

The value and necessity of engaging multiple sectors to work collaboratively to address complex issues is now a widely accepted practice. As recognition of the value and importance of engaging the wisdom and knowledge of “context experts” in Collective Impact initiatives has grown, it has also contributed to a heightened interest in better understanding how to embed authentic engagement as a practice in community change efforts.

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Collaborating Across Sectors to Support Youth to Succeed

Posted by Sylvia Cheuy on December 6, 2018

We are all familiar with the old adage that “it takes a community to raise a child”, but translating that wisdom into high-impact action is anything but simple. In particular, developing innovative and effective strategies to address the needs of the growing percentage of youth who are neither in school nor at work is an area of specific focus for many communities throughout North America.  That is why we are fortunate to have to have examples such as Canada’s Pathways to Education and a new research brief, Building Partnerships: In Support of Where, When, and How Learning Happens published by the Aspen Institute, to offer a richer understanding of the interconnected factors that enable young people to thrive and demonstrate that by working together collaboratively across sectors, communities can achieve high-impact results that ensure promising futures for all youth. 

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