David Wilcox's List: cenabling

Network development among nonprofit leaders in Boston

From the various discussions and exchanges this week, I’ve come away with three particular perspectives on digital neighbourhood / community organising that may not be new but have been reinforced for me.
Digital needs to primarily serve face-to-face relationship building
A blend of online and offline techniques and tools are needed, bespoke to the specific circumstances
Digital tools or hardware can offer new possibilities but can also dominate strategy unhelpfully, especially at grassroots

Here Cormac Russell, of the Asset Based Community Development Institute, described exactly what a Community Builder does, and how they behave in the process of Community Building

A couple of weeks ago I went to a conference in Manchester about the theory of asset-based community development … starting with the strengths in a community rather than the problems. Glass half full rather than half empty.
Last Saturday I went to south London, to see the results of ABCD in practice at a celebration day for I Love Thornton Heath. Over the past few months a group of residents have explored their neighbourhood, and their neighbours, to find the good things that are happening, and think about what more could be done.

Five headlines emerged from what we consider a first ever gathering of this type:

Our primary intervention as community network builders is to create, protect and preserve intentional community spaces that help people weave a community fabric of relationships, co-investment and action
Well designed and effectively stewarded spaces that feed the aspirational energy of residents, can unleash significant capacity for creative local solutions and cultivate important new connections across class, ethnic and racial, geographic and generational divides.
As stewards of these intentional spaces, we must lead from within.  Which means we must fully inhabit these spaces ourselves and practice; expose our own questions and vulnerabilities and work to diminish the impact of positional power on the co-investment process.
The forms needed to support this work must be more flexible, less boundaried and more adaptable than traditional community-based organizations.
The case for supporting community network building is clear to practitioners, but needs a relationship-based approach to engaging funders, policy makers and others in co-creating a data/narrative for external case making.

Good article! http://t.co/dDWt66jU @MalibuC1969 @fairsharetrust @LynneKowalski @MasseyManc @davidwilcox @CormacRussell

If you’ve had a very imaginative idea but are struggling to scale up or duplicate through regular enterprise models and methods there is a chance you have created a Social Collaborative Platform without realising it. I have only recently come up with these observations, as always I am keen to know what you think.

Here's what SCPs could possibly look like

If we tap into the assets of communities we can make an impact in ways that regeneration schemes never could. But it requires investment, says Nick Massey

The Community Knowledge Transfer Project involves a small group of established community organisations from across the UK exploring how to harness local knowledge and know-how through digital asset development.