May 2022 CD Practitioner Gathering Harvest

On Wednesday, May 11h we convened as community development practitioners for our monthly peer-based conversations.

You can access the full notes here, or flip through the note taking slides below!

 
 

We had three breakout rooms have conversations , and the highlights below were gathered from the group debrief.

Exploring Asset Mapping / Block Connector Model / Low cost neighbourly connections

  • Check the notes for different resources available on block connectors

  • Community ownership over projects is key

  • Special considerations for engaging people in apartments needed

How do we ask people to volunteer and get involved considering challenging individual circumstances?

  • People are still uncomfortable coming out to do physical activities

  • A lot of people have been moving, and/or focusing on looking for work and not volunteering. Looking at incentives to get people involved, like gift cards.

  • Pre-pandemic it was common for 50-100 people to attend events, need to shift focus to being okay with 10 people attending and two building stronger connections

  • Have something fun and interesting to do - strong connections will carry it forward!

  • Important to have meeting spaces for people to come together organically

How do we develop communities with the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility lens?

  • Always make sure you are checking in afterwards, be able to have open and honest conversations after for real feedback

  • The use of storytelling for confronting conscious and unconscious bias is helpful

  • Hold space for the good and the bad for learning challenges in creating physical accessibility with limited budgets etc., know we aren’t alone.

  • Stay committed to doing better.

CD PractitionersCDLIharvest, practitioners, learning, conversations