Newsletters
Inspiring Communities Newsletter No 18 : October 2010 |
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In this Newsletter you’ll find…--- Inspiring Communities News: Opotiki murals created by 250 Opotiki young people are now exhibiting at Te Papa before going to Washington; Auckland communities learn to harness the power of story telling. --- Community-Led and Community Driven: Stokes Valley neighbourhood produces an “Asset Map” through Hutt City Council’s ABCD approach; and the New Zealand 10/10/2010 contribution to the “350 Global Working Bee”.
--- News you can use: The ‘treasure hunt’ that became a neighbourhood discovery and vision building day with over 300 Point Chevalier people; Canada’s Vibrant Communities reports great progress in reducing poverty – looking back over nine years of comprehensive, locally-based and nationally connected effort.
--- Events: Lots of interesting forums coming up, including workshops on Evaluation with Paul Duignan of SHORE, and on Community Conversations with Tamarack’s Paul Born. Also the 2nd Australian Asset Based Community Development Conference and other NZ events on sustaining families and creating inclusive communities. --- Learning Links: A reminder if you’ve not already, to view the youtube interviews with Michael Quinn Patton on Developmental Evaluation; interactive websites on seeking community (Canada-based) and Living Communities (Australia-based); get insight into Tamarack’s strategic dialogue process on poverty reduction, and a plug for Tamarack’s redesigned website homepage and ‘Engage!’ e-magazine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EditorialKia ora tatou John McKnight, the American practitioner who pioneered Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), talks about building communities from the inside out through focusing on community strengths and assets. This is a catch cry for community-led development. An approach that doesn’t deny problems but focuses on how to achieve effective and durable change. The Mercado Central market is one example from the United States – a successful Latino, inner city Minneapolis neighbourhood market that continues to thrive after 10 years. With a big vision, and working with many different groups and organisations, there are now 44 businesses established, 70 new jobs employing local people and almost $300k of business loans to new Latino-owned businesses. www.abcdinstitute.org In Canada, effective, collaborative, place-based change achieved over nine years is reported in Vibrant Communities’ recent evaluation report. It highlights positive results from their experimental innovative and collaborative approach to fight poverty, with reduced poverty for more than 170,000 households in Canada. Vibrant Communities has a commitment to long-term learning and change, including the ups and downs along the journey. Counting the numbers of households moving out of poverty and using success stories as tools for learning, evaluation and communication are both important. Here in New Zealand we are seeing the same pattern emerge – we expect it will take up to ten years to achieve sustained, transformational change. Vital factors to this are clear intent, adaptable approaches, and noticing, learning about and capitalising on the small changes as they develop. Thinking of New Zealand’s journey to date, Philanthropy NZ has published an article on community-led development in its Spring 2010 magazine. It covers just some of the highlights that have inspired us at Inspiring Communities over the past two years. Clearly there is a growing momentum to build on. We are pleased to see community-led development being highlighted in this way. You can read the article on our website. There’s more about Vibrant Communities, and other developments, in the Learning Links section of the newsletter and on our website. These links are brought to you by Denise Bijoux who has come on board as the Learning and Outcomes Convenor for Inspiring Communities. Denise brings practical community, policy and academic experience in research and learning, and a particular expertise and interest in place-making. The overall newsletter is a team enterprise produced under the guidance of Leigh Strange, Communications Manager. With her heart in community Leigh comes from the corporate communications world. We are fortunate to have such committed and skilled people join the team. Both Denise and Leigh work part-time. Mary-Jane Rivers and the Inspiring Communities Team ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ INSPIRING COMMUNITIES NEWSLatest happenings for us and the communities in the Core Learning Cluster
Telling and sharing our stories of community-led action and change A community story telling workshop was held at Te Mahurhure Marae in Pt Chevalier on 5 October 2010. The top priorities for the session were determined by the participants, through our July 2010 Auckland Community-Led Development Network Survey: * Ideas for helping communities tell and share their stories * Effective story telling techniques and tools * How to incorporate story telling into reports for funders * How stories can communicate change and progress in communities We were incredibly fortunate to have awesome communicators co-host the session with us: Anna Kominik from Ideas Shop and Andrew Melville from Spoke Communications Read the report from the workshop
Opotiki murals now showing at Te Papa Last month 12 young people travelled to the opening at Te Papa of an exhibition of murals they had helped create in Opotiki. They were accompanied by supporters, the Mayor John Forbes, and Opotiki’s Police Youth Aid Officer. More than 250 young Opotiki artists, from 12 local schools, designed and painted the murals. The town looks beautiful as a result. During the time the murals were being created, reported crime fell 50%, and graffiti dropped 80% ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ COMMUNITY LED AND COMMUNITY DRIVENAsset Based Community Development in Hutt City Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is a system that is revolutionising the traditional practice of development throughout the world. The philosophy behind ABCD is that every community has the power to achieve what is most important for them by capitalising on their collective skills and talents (or assets), rather then focussing on their deficits. Furthermore, ABCD warns against needs or deficit based community development, which can reinforce negative perceptions about communities. Inspired by this new approach to Council/community relationships, Hutt City Council began to incorporate ABCD philosophy into the way it worked in local communities, making it part of their strategic framework. Using ABCD tools such as ’asset mapping‘ and ’community conversations‘ they are venturing outside traditional ways of working with communities. Read the article kindly provided by Hutt City Council
New Zealand communities getting down to work on climate change. On 10/10/2010, in 150 locations around the country, communities, citizens and organisations got their hands dirty for the ‘350 Global Working Bee’ on Climate Change. This meant everything from home sustainability retrofits, launching community gardens, tree plantings, hosting bike repair workshops and sustainability skill ups. Read the article kindly provided by Carl Chenery
Modern day bartering in the form of Time Bank: TV3 News item It’s no surprise to us that Time Banking is spreading throughout New Zealand, from Kaitaia in the North, to Gore in the South. On 3 October TV3 visited New Zealand's first Time Bank, in Lyttelton - you can read or watch the item on the TV3 website. See also the article from our February newsletter, "Time banking reveals wealth in communities" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEWS YOU CAN USE
Vibrant Communities (VC) Evaluation Report This is an evaluation report of a nine year experiment that demonstrates the positive impacts of an innovative and collaborative approach to fighting poverty. The work is driving benefits for individuals, neighbourhoods and large scale communities Vibrant Communities Canada 2002-2010 Evaluation Report highlights key results and offers deeper understanding of the critical success factors, effectiveness and patterns identified through the VC experiment – learning that can help shape and inspire new ideas and strategies in communities across Canada. Click on the links to: Read the report or the executive summary visit the VC Evaluation webpage learn about the Vibrant Communities experience.
Hunt in Pt Chevalier finds more than just treasure When Transition Town Pt Chevalier wanted to have more people involved in the community action group, they decided on a creative approach to engage locals in thinking about their community – hence the Treasure Hunt was born, and 350 people participated on the day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EVENTS
Nov-Dec 2010: Evaluation Workshops by Paul Duignan These are free training workshops in evaluation offered by SHORE, a high quality organisation for people linked to public and community health organisations, targeting communities, groups and environments rather than the delivery of personal health services.
Introduction to Evaluation workshops: The three day Introduction to Evaluation workshop provides an introduction to evaluation. Topics covered include Planning and Programme Logic development, Building your Evaluation, as well as data collection and drawing evaluative conclusions. Wellington 2-4 November. Christchurch 23-25 November.
Planning and Programme Logic workshops: project planning and logic modelling (this content is also covered in the Introduction to Evaluation workshop). Hamilton 16 November 2010; Gisborne 1 December 2010 Find out more and enrol at Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation:
17 November 2010: Paul Born, President and co founder of Tamarack - an Institute for Community Engagement (Auckland) A series of one day 'hands on' interactive workshops on facilitating 'community conversations' that result in social and economic change, led by author and internationally recognised community builder Paul Born, from the Tamarack Institute, Canada. These one day facilitator training events will explore and share experiences, methodologies and tools regarding: * Ways communities are leading powerful conversations for change * Hosting strategic conversations and attracting the right participation * Advancing your community's agenda with innovative mobilisation techniques * Embracing the power of citizen engagement and multi sector collaboration
17-19 November 2010: Coming of Age – Reaching Sustainability (Dunedin) A forum to explore the ways and means to better sustain families and communities within New Zealand society.
1-3 December 2010: Strengths & Assets Summit. University of Newcastle (Australia) The Summit brings together the 6th Australian Family and Community Strengths Conference and the 2nd Asset Based Community Development Asia Pacific Conference in a celebration of over 10 years of concentrated development of strengths based policy, practice and research in the Australasian family and community services sector.
20-24 February 2011: Inclusive Communities NZ: Down Under Institute 2011 (Hamilton) Themes include Asset Based Community Development, Community, Culture, Disability, Generations, and Story Telling.
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LEARNING LINKS
Youtube video: Interview with Michael Quinn Patton Advisor to Tamarack, Michael Quinn Patton, visited Inspiring Communities in 2009 to talk about developmental evaluation. Listen to the practical tips and an explanation of approaches to ‘real-time’ useful evaluation here: Developmental Evaluation and Intentionality & short term goals.
Interactive website: Seeking Community (Canada) This newly launched website offers an online community for those who share a curiosity for community and are seeking a space to explore and reflect on how it can be strengthened. Community is vital to our health, happiness, prosperity and safety. The Seeking Community website is a place where you can explore your questions, connect with other seekers, and access the information, inspiration, ideas and resources to help you on your journey.
Interactive website: Living Communities programme (Australia) Developed by the Living Towns Corporation, Living Communities is a programme for rural towns. It focuses on how to keep money in local economies through less traditional development and this has flow-on effects including maintaining and growing local populations, enhancing and expanding local enterprise, building social capital and becoming more resilient. It has some interesting guiding principles and a blog you can subscribe to, as well as Faceboook and Twitter pages.
Report and resources: Strategic Dialogue on place-based poverty reduction (Canada) This comprehensive page includes an overview of a process of strategic dialogue (including presentations and resources) from a two day session focusing on place-based poverty reduction efforts in Canada. The process focused on the challenges of broadening civic engagement and the roles of business and government in community change efforts; the impacts currently generated by intermediary organisations and maintaining momentum. Evidence about the patterns, themes and results of comprehensive community approaches to poverty reduction was presented and future directions were established. 46 sector leaders participated. The background papers are really interesting about poverty but also about community building, catalysing and change-making. Visit Tamarack's strategic dialogue on place-based poverty reduction.
Redesigned Tamarack Homepage and e-magazine Check it out. The redesigned Engage! e-magazine now incorporates social media elements and RSS news feeds into an easier to navigate layout.
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