As cities respond and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an opportunity to build back better—to centre recovery efforts on improving the outcomes for our most vulnerable citizens, our civic life, and our planet.
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At the local level of the Communities Building Youth Futures (CBYF) initiative, our CBYF communities are beginning to build their Common Agenda and identifying collective impact strategies for supporting their youth to ensure successful transition from high school.
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How do we write in a way that is appealing to youth? How do we get them to pay attention?
As much as I think we can all learn a lot to make our writing more accessible, I think first, we need a gut check on who’s doing the writing anyway.
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I have long been curious about the different roles that stories and narratives can play in the work of community change. I have seen how one individual story, powerfully told, has the power to instantly engage people and offer clarity and understanding of a complex issue in ways that well-researched data and analysis alone cannot accomplish.
I know that communities, like individuals, have stories about themselves that can both limit and inspire their hopes for the future. These community narratives – about who we are; how things go; what’s possible for us here – shape collective thinking and can play a role in determining the future. Uncovering current shared community narratives and inviting community members to co-create new, compelling narratives that are rooted in their shared hopes for the future can be a powerful lever for community change.
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Coming out of Phase Three you will have a group of people who are connected, who understand what their shared vision is, and have been let loose to brainstorm ideas. There’s likely a lot of momentum. But it may feel slightly messy or overwhelming. Enter: Phase Four.
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Coming into Phase Three your group will now have reached some form of alignment on a shared vision. Having this shared vision is critical as it is the foundation for this next phase of building new ideas.
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