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Trickle-Down Community Engagement

Posted by Mark Holmgren on March 8, 2016

I have been preparing for the community engagement learning event Tamarack is doing in Ottawa this week, called Community Engagement: The Next Generation. One of the workshops I wanted to do was on engagement of marginalized populations, in particular those living in poverty. My exploration of this topic led me to some provocative writing by Vu Le, who is a writer, speaker, and executive director of Rainier Valley Corps, a capacity building organization with a focus on leveling the playing field for people of colour as well as small, grass roots organizations.

I was particularly drawn to a piece he wrote on his blog about “Trickle-Down Community Engagement,” and his writing became the catalyst for one of the workshops I am doing, aptly called “Avoiding Trickle-Down Community Engagement of the Marginalized.”

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Reflections on Making Complexity Simple

Posted by Sarah Fielden and Sarah Farina on March 8, 2016

Inquiring Minds

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Treating the Cause, Rather than the Symptoms

Posted by Andrew Taylor & Ben Liadsky on March 2, 2016

Building an evaluation agenda for the Nonprofit Sector

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To Engage or Mobilize?

Posted by Tom Klaus on February 29, 2016

Recently I have been ruminating on the difference between community engagement and community mobilization. "Ruminate" is a great word for a Leap Day because the extra day gives us more time to really think on something, right? In the United States, where I do much of my work, we seem to prefer the term mobilization more than engagement, though we sometimes refer to mobilization as engagement and vice versa. 

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Engaging Millennials | Learning to Adapt

Posted by Sienna Jae Taylor on February 24, 2016

"All failure is failure to adapt. All success is successful adaptation" - Max Mckeown


In today's world everything appears to change at hyper-speed: schools are moving online, cheques can be deposited via mobile apps, text messages are the new phone calls, and Instagram has replaced photo albums. So much of our world is online -- the way that people connect and communicate has changed drastically and if we want to successfully engage the next generation, we must be willing to adapt to the lifestyle of the Millennials.

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Transformational Change is Possible | 6 Essential Elements

Posted by Sienna Jae Taylor on February 20, 2016

"Working in complexity can surface some tough challenges, but they are not insurmountable. Transformational change is possible." - Liz Weaver

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