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Reflecting on the Basics of Effective Meetings

As I reflected on my 2018 year, I realized that I spent a lot of time in meetings at work and in my personal life. Meetings are an effective way for a group to get together and work on projects, communicate and to share resources. I am the type of person who wants to get in and get out with optimal work done. Having spent A LOT of time in meetings last year I realize that more than half of them were not as effective as they could have been. 

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What Makes Your Neighbourhood Work an Asset-Based Community Development Process?

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) is not a new concept. About 40 years ago, John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann, took a four-year learning journey, visiting twenty cities and talking to 2,000 people in neighbourhoods which culminated in the book Building Communities From the Inside Out: A Path Towards Finding and Mobilizing a Neighborhood’s Assets. They wanted to discover if people knew who lived on their block and if they do things together. From this journey, 125,000 books have been sold and a movement was created.

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A Gift is Not a Gift Until It’s Given

This is an appropriate title for two reasons. First, it is the holiday season, the time of year that we are giving gifts to each other. Secondly, in 2018 we hosted an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) event, and what better way of practicing ABCD than for our members to give their gifts of stories, tools and resources.

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Celebrating the Lights – Life!

How might we contest the darkness of night where fear and sorrow reside and bring the light of expectation and accomplishment?
Around the world this is a time of year when we celebrate light as victory over the forces which destroy life. Beautiful celebrations known as Hanukkah, Diwali and Christmas, to name but a few fill us with hope and joy. For Canadians these celebrations bring special meaning as we enter a season with some of the shortest days of the year.

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Getting to Impact the Observational Way

A few years ago, I read a book called "Trying Hard is Not Good Enough" by Mark Friedman. The book talks about how initiatives can be complicated and complex, and therefore this makes it hard to reduce evaluating these initiatives to a set of numbers and equations. Mark suggests that we need to talk about the story behind the data. Look at the stories, anecdotes and accomplishments that explain what the data is saying.   

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Cities Deepening Community Policy Digest - October

This is the October edition of the Cities Deepening Community Policy Digest. The Digest provides timely policy updates from across Canada that support the work of Cities Deepening Community.

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