Connecting Ideas to Practice: Tamarack on the Global Stage

Posted on March 20, 2018
By Liz Weaver

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The international Association of Community Development (IACD) is a global network of community change leaders who are seeking to build the capacity of communities to realize greater social and economic equality, environmental protection and political democracy. Over its 15-year history, Tamarack has both contributed to and been influenced by the ideas of IACD thought leaders including Peter Drucker, John McKnight, and Cormac Russell.

In the most recent edition of the IACD Practice Insights, Tamarack contributed two articles which illustrate both the challenge and the opportunity of deep community engagement in co-creating change. Lisa Attygalle’s article on The Context Experts describes the value of citizens in sharing their expertise about navigating community systems. Context experts are people with lived experience of the situation, including children and youth. They are the people who experientially know about the issue and can share their expertise in how the issue impacts them and their livelihoods. Authentic community engagement purposefully including context experts in co-creating solutions.

Liz Weaver’s paper on Turf, Trust, Co-Creation and Collective Impact explores tools and techniques for building trust, even when it is fragmented and may not exist in community change efforts. It is often quoted that ‘collaboration moves at the speed of trust’ and without paying attention to building relational trust, community change efforts can be stalled or break down completely.

This issue of the IACD Practice Insights issue also highlights several other articles that would be of interest to community change leaders. There is a report which looks at the unique challenges that small towns in Canada and the US face from the perspective of local citizens. There is an interesting approach to ripple effect mapping and engaging citizens in understanding outcomes and impacts. The IACD Practice Insights magazine concludes with an article on community development organizational trends and trajectories.

A companion publication to this IACD Practice Insights is a 65th anniversary edition which highlights the global evolution of community development. This issue profiles some of the key community development influencers and their contributions to the work of community change:

After sixty five years we are still a young field and perhaps the best is yet to come. The challenges have certainly grown. But there is massive evidence now from across the world as to what works and what doesn’t. And there is a huge canon of scholarship and research in our field and IACD, through such resources as the Global Community Development Exchange
 is keen to make this as accessible as possible to a new generation of students, practitioners, agency managers, funders and policy advisers around the world. (IACD Practice Insights – 65th Anniversary Edition)

From June 24-27, 2018, community development practitioners will be meeting at the World Community Development Conference in Kildare Ireland. The theme of the conference is Participation, Power and Progress: Community Development towards 2030 – Our Analysis, Our Actions. It will certainly be a time of celebration, reflection and looking forward. 

IACD Practice Insights:

 

Topics:
Blog, Community Change, Community Development


Liz Weaver

By Liz Weaver

Liz is passionate about the power and potential of communities getting to impact on complex issues. Liz is Tamarack’s Co-CEO and Director, Learning Centre. In this role she provides strategic direction to the organization and leads many of its key learning activities including collective impact capacity building services for the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Liz is one of Tamarack's highly regarded trainers and has developed and delivered curriculum on a variety of workshop topics including collaborative governance, leadership, collective impact, community innovation, influencing policy change and social media for impact and engagement.

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