Imagine a restaurant review that focused exclusively on the cutlery on the table. “What about the meal?” you would ask. Indeed.
Knives and forks aren’t the meal. They are merely a means to a hopefully delicious end. Sadly, in the social justice world there is too much focus on tools and processes.
My colleague and mentor Jay Connor often pushes me with this question. On the surface, it seems like an easy question to answer. We are doing this to improve the lives of people in our communities who are being impacted in negative ways. That answer pulls at heart strings. It gets lots of heads nodding in agreement. But it is also a vague response and one that does not hold us to account.
Read More
When the Tamarack Institute came to Vancouver March 7th to 9th, I had the privilege of joining a group of dedicated community engagement specialists from North America and Australia for 3 days filled with dialogue, creativity, and fun during the Community Engagement: the Next Generation conference. There were so many ideas circulating I needed a few days to digest them (and, if truth be told, I also attended the weekend HSBC Rugby Sevens tournament, another very engaging and fun event!).
Read More
Before launching a new initiative, I often advise groups to have “100 Cups of Coffee.” Not to be confused with the popular Futurama Frye video clip, 100 Cups of Coffee is a way to understand the complexity of an issue, build relationships with key people and organizations, and discover opportunities for synergy.
Read More
Over the past several weeks I have attended workshops, meetings and conferences about a wide variety of topics including refugee settlement, advancing STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), homelessness and health. In each case, I was not the content expert, in fact, I knew very little about the subject matter being discussed. Rather, I was invited for my knowledge of community engagement and collective impact.
Read More
In 2015, Vidyard, a video marketing and analytics company based in Kitchener, Ontario, launched an initiative called PlugIn aimed at helping to mitigate some of the negative effects of gentrification in downtown Kitchener by giving back to their community.
Read More