The Latest

Top 10 Community Engagement Questions

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!).

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100 Cups of Coffee

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.

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The Language of Inclusion

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. 

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Connecting to a Cause: When Business Gives Back

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.

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Our Growing Understanding of Community Well-Being

What is community well-being and how is it improved?  Those curious about this question will find much to engage them in the newly-published Handbook of Community Well-Being Research.  It is the first publication of its kind to bring together foundational and leading-edge research to offer a compendium of knowledge, approaches and insights for improving quality of life in communities of place. 

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Connecting Lakeside: A Deepening Community Initiative

In the spring of 2016, The Regional Municipality of York partnered with Tamarack to launch a Local Deepening Community Initiative called Connecting Lakeside at its Lakeside Residences Building in South Keswick. The conversations hosted as part of the Connecting Lakeside Initiative helped neighbours get to know one another; discover their shared hopes for the building that they call home; and, discover the gifts, knowledge and talents they each have to share.  It also created an opportunity for Region staff and community partners to get to know and work with Lakeside residents to facilitate linkages with the broader community, and to support resident-led projects that have made the building an even better place to live. 

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