In an environment where cynicism prevails, the challenge of tapping into new and creative actions seems daunting at best. To me, the driving questions at this point revolves around “how do we create a stronger sense of belonging, marked by authentic engagement (in its many forms), in our community”.

When we talk about community, belonging, engagement, systemic barriers, authentic dialogue, inclusive processes etc.. we are talking complexity. How do we have a meaningful and sense making discussion when we are constantly wearing our silo centred, agency representative hat? It’s a bit like seeing the fairy dancing on the head of the pin. You know that fairy is there but you just have to hold the pin in the right way to see him/her.

I think that one of the ways to see that fairy is to somehow suspend or put on the shelf for the moment our agency representation hat and just wear our community citizen hat. When we do that, we can engage with each other and talk about what community means, where does belonging fit into community and what might our community look like if we waved our magic wand and on and on. I think there would be wonderful lessons in that discussion that we can build on and potentially influence policy makers in our organizations. Even more importantly, those lessons can impact us on individual (personal) levels as community citizens, potentially creating a ripple effect in our relationships within our spheres of belonging.

This video by Mark Schenk from Anecdote expands the explanation of the Cynefin model. I like this model as a tool that can help us understand what we are getting into with our community roundtable planning discussions. I think there are some great tips in the Cynefin framework that we can incorporate in our planning for of the roundtable. I especially like the simplicity of the Cynefin framework and how it points to the importance of looking at patterns and building on patterns that show promise.

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.The Harm Reduction Coalition is hosting a series of learning and awareness building events that bring new and hopefully greater acceptance of harm reduction policies and practices into our York Region services. Last week we held our first “building awareness event” and we had 3 guest speakers. Tom Rigehr, survivor, writer, founder of CAST Canada, Cathy Middleton, Director of Women’s Services from YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo and David Collins, President and founder of the the Toronto Harm Reduction Task Force. Through this event and others like we are working towards making York Region a more caring inclusive community.

In this video, Dave Collins gives a great overview of the evolution of harm reduction practices and policies in Toronto. I have video of Tom and Cathy but the quality just isn’t as good as they moved around quite a bit and I didn’t have an audio feed to work with.

Related Posts:

Strengthening Practice: Building Resiliency with Learning Networks

Extend Your Messenge & Include the Messengers