For the Love of Community Engagement

For the Love of Community Engagement

Author: Becky Hirst

Publisher:

Published: 2021-04-19

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9781649696120

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Becky Hirst is a skilled community engagement practitioner who is willing to tell it how it is. And she has grave concerns for the future of public participation. To have a thriving society, we need people and communities who are actively involved in civic life. For politicians, public servants, corporations, or planners to engage with communities in any positive way, they need to learn a new way of doing things. A wealth of sophisticated public consultation slogans, methods and frameworks are frequently seen. But we are close to breaking point. Some fundamental things are missing. And, right now, we need to focus our energies on them. As a matter of urgency. Whilst this book shines a clear light of day on hard truths we can't escape, the stories within it are about love, passion, enthusiasm and a heartfelt commitment to community empowerment and community building. Becky's expedition through her career to date is authentically presented as 20 easy-to-follow key insights, combined with 100 conversation starters to provide the reader with calls to both reflect and act. For the Love of Community Engagement seeks to inspire better public participation - and that it will!


The Heart of Community Engagement

The Heart of Community Engagement

Author: Patricia Wilson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-06

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0429614446

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Drawing on first-hand accounts of action research in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, The Heart of Community Engagement illustrates the transformative learning journeys of exemplary catalysts for community-based change. Practitioners’ stories of community engagement for social justice in the Global South elucidate the moments of insight and transformation that deepened their practice: how to deal with uncertainty, recognize their own blind spots, become aware of what is emergent and possible in the moment, and weave an inclusive bond of love, respect, and purpose. Each successive narrative adds a deeper level of understanding of the inner practice of community engagement. The stories illuminate the reflective, or inner, practice of the outside change agent, whether a planner, designer, participatory action researcher, or community development practitioner. From a shantytown in South Africa, to a rural community in India, or an informal settlement in peri-urban Mexico, the stories focus attention on the greatest leverage point for change that we, as engaged practitioners, have: our own self-awareness. By the end of the book, the practitioners are not only aware of their own conditioned beliefs and assumptions, but have opened their minds and hearts to the complex and dynamic patterns of emergent change that is possible. This book serves as a much-needed reader of practice stories to help instructors and students find the words, concepts, and examples to talk about their own subjective experience of community engagement practice. The book applies some of the leading-edge concepts from organizational development and leadership studies to the fields of planning, design, and community engagement practice. Key concepts include the deep dive of sensing the social field, seeing the whole, and presencing the emergent future. The book also provides a creative bridge between participatory action research and design thinking: user-based design, rapid prototyping, and learning from doing.


Dream Play Build

Dream Play Build

Author: James Rojas

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2022-02

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1642831492

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The room is dim, the chairs are in perfectly lined rows. The city planner puts up a color-coded diagram of the street improvement project, dreading the inevitable angry responses. Jana loves her community and is glad to be able to attend the evening meeting, and she has a lot of ideas for community change. But she has a hard time hearing, and can’t see the diagrams clearly. She leaves early. It’s time to imagine a different type of community engagement – one that inspires connection, creativity, and fun. People love their communities and want them to become safer, healthier, more prosperous places. But the standard approach to public meetings somehow makes everyone miserable. Conversations that should be inspiring can become shouting matches. So what would it look like to facilitate truly meaningful discussions between citizens and planners? What if they could be fun? For twenty years, James Rojas and John Kamp have been looking to art, creative expression, and storytelling to shake up the classic community meeting. In Dream Play Build, they share their insights into building common ground and inviting active participation among diverse groups. Their approach, “Place It!,” draws on three methods: the interactive model-building workshop, the pop-up, and site exploration using our senses. Using our hands to build and create is central to what makes us human, helping spark ideas without relying on words to communicate. Deceptively playful, this method is remarkably effective at teasing out community dreams and desires from hands-on activities. Dream Play Build offers wisdom distilled from workshops held around the world, and a deep dive into the transformational approach and results from the South Colton community in southern California. While much of the process was developed through in-person meetings, the book also translates the experience to online engagement--how to make people remember their connections beyond the computer screen. Inspirational and fun, Dream Play Build celebrates the value of engaging with the dreams we have for our communities. Readers will find themselves weaving these artful, playful lessons and methods into their own efforts for making change within the landscape around them.


18 Rules of Community Engagement

18 Rules of Community Engagement

Author: Angela Connor

Publisher: Happy About

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 160005143X

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Connor shares how she helped her online community surpass 11,000 members in 18 short months in this definitive guide for those seeking to facilitate and grow online communities and develop social media strategies for themselves or their organizations.


Modern-Day Strategies for Community Engagement

Modern-Day Strategies for Community Engagement

Author: Makara Rumley

Publisher:

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 9781644841303

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Government agencies, corporations, and organizations have often experienced difficulty when trying to connect with the people who are most impacted by their projects. It is necessary to leave the office, get from behind the computer, and interact with people face-to-face. There is an art and process to engaging with your community--a group of people with shared commonality. This book serves as a primer for how the public and private sectors can interact with their customers and constituents in an authentic, equitable, and intentional manner. In Modern-Day Strategies for Community Engagement: How to Effectively Build Bridges Between People and the Bottom Line, MaKara Rumley takes the reader through the process of effective community engagement. She sets the stage for why community engagement remains an invaluable tool when it comes to managing headline risk, maintaining project timelines, and ensuring good will. With Modern-Day Strategies for Community Engagement as a guide, the reader will engender confidence in their ability to implement measurable strategies and communicate using plain language that will resonate with their prioritized audience.


From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive

From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive

Author: Paige West

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2012-02-10

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0822351501

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West looks at the process from which coffee is grown, gathered, sorted, shipped, and served from the highlands of Papua New Guinea to coffee shops in far away places. She shows how coffee becomes a commodity, the different forms of labor involved, and the way that coffee shapes the lives and understandings of those who grow, process, export, sell and consume coffee.


We Want to Do More Than Survive

We Want to Do More Than Survive

Author: Bettina L. Love

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0807069159

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Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists. Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex. To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.


People Powered

People Powered

Author: Jono Bacon

Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1400214890

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What if you discovered a blueprint that could grow your brand’s reputation and loyalty, dramatically reduce customer service issues, produce content and technology, and cement a powerful, lasting relationship between you and your customers? Communities have been a popular topic since the rise of the Internet and social media, but few companies have consistently harnessed their power, driven tangible value, and effectively measured their return on investment (ROI) like Salesforce.com, Star Citizen via Kickstarter, and Red Hat. Companies such as PayPal, Facebook, Bosch, Microsoft, CapitalOne, and Google, have also built communities inside their organizations, which have fostered innovation, broken down silos, and helped their organizations to operate more efficiently and collaboratively. People Powered helps C-suite leaders, founders, marketers, customer advocates, and community leaders gain a competitive advantage by answering the following questions: What is the key value proposition of building a community? What kind of community do we need and how do we build and integrate it into our organization? How do we incentivize and encourage people to get involved, build reliable growth, and keep community members engaged? How do we develop authentic, productive relationships with community members both online and in person? How do we get departmental buy-in, hire effectively, and create consistent, reliable community engagement skills in our organization? What are the strategic and tactical pitfalls and roadblocks we need to avoid? How do we make sure that our community continues to grow with us—and more importantly, how do we make sure that we continue to grow with them? People Powered pulls together over 20 years of pragmatic experience into a clear, simple methodology and blueprint to not just answer these questions, but deliver results. Don’t get left behind—become an industry trailblazer and ensure your company’s longevity by tapping into the most dynamic force both outside and inside your organization: the people.


Ask, Listen, Empower

Ask, Listen, Empower

Author: Mary Davis Fournier

Publisher: American Library Association

Published: 2021-01-08

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0838948324

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Foreword by Tracie D. Hall Community engagement isn’t simply an important component of a successful library—it’s the foundation upon which every service, offering, and initiative rests. Working collaboratively with community members—be they library customers, residents, faculty, students or partner organizations— ensures that the library works, period. This important resource from ALA’s Public Programs Office (PPO) provides targeted guidance on how libraries can effectively engage with the public to address a range of issues for the betterment of their community, whether it is a city, neighborhood, campus, or something else. Featuring contributions by leaders active in library-led community engagement, it’s designed to be equally useful as a teaching text for LIS students and a go-to handbook for current programming, adult services, and outreach library staff. Balancing practical tools with case studies and stories from field, this collection explores such key topics as why libraries belong in the community engagement realm; getting the support of board and staff; how to understand your community; the ethics and challenges of engaging often unreached segments of the community; identifying and building engaged partnerships; collections and community engagement; engaged programming; and outcome measurement.