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Ingenuity Required

Ingenuity, the ability to be clever, original and inventive, is a skill needed in every community.  People living across the Lower North Shore of Quebec have incredible ingenuity and resourcefulness.  One of the biggest challenges is that this region is a mix of 15 small, often isolated communities.  Some of the communities are only connected by ferry or airplane while others have roads.  Cell phone service is sporadic at best and if the weather comes in, forget it.  The communities, in the past have spent more time competing with each other, rather than leveraging their ingenuity to tackle their tough problems. 

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Dancing with the System

Community change work is often compared to being engaged in a Tango, a complex dance where the partners exchange leadership, followership, passion, desire, intensity and drama.  Now, I am not much of a dancer, but I can appreciate this metaphor. 

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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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This Process is Personal

Community change is personal.  It is, at its very core, about changing citizens and communities for the better.  However, we often depersonalize this process.  We talk about services, programs, statistics and organizations in a way that removes the face of citizens.  Perhaps this makes the process easier.  It also removes the urgency of the issue.  If we don’t reflect on the daily impact that citizens are facing in our communities, we can spend endless time in conversation about the problem.   

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How Can Data Transform the Sector?

Recently, there was a gathering in Toronto focused on how the voluntary or community benefits sector engages with data to advance and even transform community outcomes. This was the second stop on a world tour by the Data on Purpose group from Stanford University.

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Going Deeper – Building our Trust Account

In a previous blog, I explored the components of trust including Stephen M.R. Covey’s 5 waves of trust from his book The Speed of Trust. This blog will go a little deeper, exploring how to build a personal trust account.

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