The Community – School Roundtable was an event that brought over 80 people from very diverse organizations and sectors together. The Roundtable was organized by a group of school and community partners in York Region. It was an Open Space session in which you can choose your own topic to lead or select a topic that you wish to participate in. With the “rule of 2 feet” you can find another topic to participate in if you don’t find the session right for you. Here is how the workshop organizers framed the session.

Goals

The goals of the School Community Round Table are to bring our collective wisdom together to:

• Increase achievement and success for all our children and youth;
• Share perspectives on community engagement;
• Explore a different conversation about school/community relationships; and
• Discover new ways to strengthen our school/community relationships.

Our overarching question for the open space conversation is:

How can school and community partners work together over the next ten years to support children and youth in reaching their full potential?

I have 3 videos from the session. The first one is on this post. You can view the opening words of welcome from the Directors of Education from our respective York Region Boards of Education and an excerpt that shows a bit of the topic setting process.

I had a great time leading a discussion titled “changing the nature of the conversation for civic engagement”. I adopted the question format used in Peter Block’s community restoration approach to civic engagement. It was just a snippet from his model but it did prove to me that powerful results can come from powerful questions.

I like his approach because it frees up the participants to think of what’s possible instead of what do we have to fix and going down that problem solving road. The people in my group shared some very personal and insightful comments about what is community and what is civic engagement.

Brent Learning Community, networks openspace roundtable

An interview with Will Davis on Social Capital and Digital Inclusion I have looked at and read many accounts of the UK online learning centres. In Britain, they are so far ahead of Canada in terms of understanding the importance of digital literacy for everyone, especially those that are disenfranchised, without family supports, the unemployed or those experiencing poverty and homelessness (or at risk of). We can learn from their experience.

Will Davies reflects on Social Capital and Digital Inclusion from Tim Davies on Vimeo.

Brent Education, Learning Community, Services, networks, purpose socialinclusion britain digitalliteracy

I found these videos in my research on A Small Group and the work of Peter Block. I haven’t watched all of them yet however Margaret Wheatley is a world renowned thought leader on community change so I don’t expect to be disappointed. There are 10 videos in all with each one covering a unique aspects of healthy community change.

Lately I’ve being immersed in a variety of community restoration and change groups. The focus for many of these efforts seem to default to righting inequities and fixing long standing communication and power issues. People like Margaret Wheatley and Peter Block offer alternative strategies for community change. I am suggesting that we use or integrate elements of these community engagement strategies however the shift to that thinking is pretty hard to make.

Despicte these challenges, I’m enjoying the planning sessions and I especially like contributing my experience in online communication strategies and tools to support these change processes. I hope you find some great questions in watching these videos. As Peter Block says, the right questions can be more transformative than answers.

Brent Learning Community, Research, networks community change peterblock restorative

In 2010 I will be hosting workshops for organizations that are re-tooling or aligning their online communication strategy to enhance responsiveness, trust and relevance to their stakeholders.

My goal is to initiate a bottoms up, learning and discovery process that will help organizations identify their best starting points for establishing their online communication strategy.

I believe that non profit organizations can increase their resilience, capacity and sustainability in the face of rapid change and ever decreasing resources by utilizing well thought out online strategies.

It’s a simple fact that consumers and supporters expect more from organizations via online tools and online access to resources. Non profits need to go where their constituents are and that is increasingly online.

My starting point is that caring relationships, opportunities for meaningful participation and genuine communication with supporters, consumers and donors fuels an organization’s resilience. These dimensions need to be examined internally by key staff and then the findings can be organized into an online strategy that is delivered through the organization’s web site.

In the workshop, staff will be engaged in a discussion and a shared learning process in which an online strategy can begin to take shape. This bottoms up approach taps into the organizations creativity and wisdom. Once the online strategy is in place and the most appropriate social media tools are implemented the organization begins a process of listening, learning and adapting to the new culture and environment they are inhabiting.

Read more…

Brent Business, Learning Community, Services, networks workshop onlinestrategy learning startingpoint

“A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits’ misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems—acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs”.

I found this article, titled “The Non Profit Starvation Cycle” – Sanford Social Innovation Review on the Ontario Non Profit Network Site.

What an eye opening and revealing paper. The research report is called, Nonprofit Overhead Cost Study, a five year research project conducted by the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

The article provoked quite a reaction in me. I’ve worked as a senior manager in the non profit sector for quite a few years and felt those starvation pangs on a regular basis.

Read more…

Brent Learning Community, Research, networks expectations, funder, Research

I’m fortunate to be a participant in a number of York Region social change initiatives. These groups plan and implement projects that strive to make a difference in our York Region community.

This post is about the shared journey that these groups are following and the interconnectedness of these diverse yet complementary initiatives.

From my vantage point I recognize how these unique programs, working towards a common purpose of a stronger, healthier, inclusive York Region, are implementing their projects with values sets that are very similar or at the least overlapping.

I thought it would an interesting reflection exercise to map out these initiatives with their diverse, yet shared value sets. Firing up my Mindmeister collaboration mapping software (free) I began adding the names of these initiatives and what I believed were the predominant supporting values that guided activities within the initiatives.

Read more…

Brent Learning Community, networks networks valuesets lens

A fabulous dinner is best prepared by merging each dish so that everything is ready to eat at the right time. This takes some planning and ingenuity along with a confidence in your abilities to create an outstanding feast that everyone will like and talk about for a long time.

Preparing a feast is a great metaphor for building a dynamic web site and integrating a client’s social media strategy into the site building process. My partner Alain (from iAutomate) and I have prepared for our roles as head chefs by accumulating collectively over 40 years of experience in the IT and social benefit sector. Our business focuses on supporting non profits in using collaborative web platforms and online communication strategies to engage their audiences.

We clearly heard from our client that a combination of solid informative content, membership opportunities plus collaboration options were needed for this web site. All of us, client team, my partner and I put the broad brush strokes to a plan that would achieve these outcomes. Essentially we were aiming to marry the web site architecture with the social media strategy and mix in the right content to present to the public for viewing and participation.

Read more…

Brent Business, Learning Community, networks drupal openatrium webdesign

I’m a social media evangelist. There, I said it. Thant wasn’t too hard, I think I will keep going with this label as it describes me to a T. I’ve just watch Clay Shirky, a NYU professor and noted author (on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies) talk about how social media has changed everything about the world. His artful and entertaining 15 minute TED talk has got me stirred.

The Internet used to be a one way vehicle, usually controlled by experts, now it’s many to many where people can by by pass censors and publish their view of the world. He uses the earth quake in China as an example, but given the historic political upheaval occurring in Iran, that country could also be used as a great example that exemplifies his points.

What I especially liked in this talk was his reference to social media as being the primary vehicle for convening and supporting groups (both on & off line). In York Region, there is a lot of interest and emerging plans for local networks and alliances such as the United Way of York Region, the York Region Alliance to End Homelessness, and the Linking Georgina group to convene groups around important community matters.

In York Region there is much convening work ahead as we address social disparities, our fragile support systems and the disconnections experienced by so many individuals and organizations. So I invite you to tap into a bit of social media evangelism take a few minutes out of your busy day and listen to Clay Shirky.

Brent Learning Community, networks convening, groups, networks, socialmedia

I’m involved with the Harm Reduction Coalition of York Region. I became involved when I was a Program Manager with Street Kids International and managed the Streetjibe – addressing youth poverty in York Region program. I’m staying involved as an independent business representative that cares deeply about the kind of community I live in.

Harm reduction is a big word covering a lot of ground. For me it’s about seeing and being with the person, not the harm. It’s also about fostering a compassionate, caring, inclusive community were we don’t lock up people or stigmatize people for their struggles as a human being. Read more…

Brent Business, Learning Community, Presentation, Research, networks Learning Community, prevention, yorkregion

Add your organization, service and basic contact information to our collaboration map. It’s easy as pie. This online collaboration map was created at our last Streetjibe workshop of 2008. On the panel to the right, you can add the URL of your agency. This map will give you quick contact information and point you in the right direction for many youth services. If you want to add a new category please email me and I will forward you the password.

From this example, you can you see how your organization, network or business might use this free mapping tool from Mindmeister. You can drag the map with your mouse. Click here to take you to a larger map on Mindmeister.

Brent Learning Community, Presentation, networks map collaboration yorkregion