The Latest

Mobilizing Change: Orillia’s Sunshine Bus

Last Fall, Tamarack's Paul Born visited Orillia and presented at the City's Georgian College Campus. While there, Paul praised the community for their recent Sunshine Initiative - a bus, transformed into a mobile canvas, driven around town with an invitation for residents to use the bus as their personal suggestion box for how they would like to see their community improved. This project is a wonderful example of deepening community and working towards a common goal. Paul left feeling inspired by Orillia residents, praising them for their citizen-led initative: "Collaboration isn't just about working together; it's about common energy. It's all of us working to implement a plan."

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Community Engagement: Why It Matters

There is a temptation, particularly in data-driven and evidence-based practices, to act in a top down manner in the design and implementation of community engagement programs.

But, there is power in those with lived experience and in reframing approaches and opportunities that engage community members directly in social change.

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Trickle-Down Community Engagement

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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To Engage or Mobilize?

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

"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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Online Tools to Help You Get to Know Your Stakeholders!

Do you ever wonder what attendees from your latest community event enjoyed most? Or what they would like to see done differently next year? Are you trying to find out what your community's greatest needs are, or whether your programs are meeting those needs? Want to know how you can better engage, acknowledge and celebrate your volunteers? Or maybe you're interested in finding out how you can increase your funders support and dedication to your cause?

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