August 2023 CD Practitioner Gathering Harvest - CDLI
On Wednesday, August 9th we hosted our eighth gathering for community development practitioners of 2023.
We had three conversations with notes captured on each. See our shared harvest here or in the slides below.
In the share back participants identified key take away/points of reflection that came from these conversations:
Room 1: What kinds of community activations have been successful in winter/shoulder months?
Responsive vs reactive - Identifying what is happening in the community and what needs are required to be supported. This is being able to plan for the cycles of your community/roles/positions/organization, etc.
Once you have tuned into this the next piece is how to get the word out.
Room 2: Engaging effectively with equity deserving groups/communities.
There is a need for all types of groups in this work - formal non-profit, grassroots organizations, individuals. The benefits to coming together in collaboration are important.
Facilitating is important - facilitate connections, facilitate spaces and places for all voices to be at the table and sometimes if you are a front line professional it is challenging to not be included in meetings or at tables where collaboration is being discussed.
Community work is messy!
Room 3: Identifying and addressing misalignment in collaboration through dialogue.
Relationship is at the core of collaboration. If it isn’t then collaboration can be a challenge.
Longstanding collaboration or new it doesn’t matter - shared values/definitions, etc. need to be established and understood otherwise you can have all the meetings in the world that go no where.
*Note that in September the COP will be trying a slightly new format with a guest co-host. Your experience in the gathering will be very similar to what you experience currently. The only change will be that the co-host will provide the discussion topics for the rooms. Join in September to try this format with us and contribute to conversation on “Community Development in Perpetuity?” which was Tyson Bankert’s session topic at Mini Summit 2023.