Acting on a vision is difficult enough for one person. But to get a group of people … well… I’ll just say it’s really really hard.
Yesterday I attended a day-long workshop titled “From Vision to Action”, hosted by the United Way of Greater Victoria and the University of Victoria’s Office for Community-Based Research. Participants included volunteers and community workers. Despite a lot of sitting and listening, the day was a refreshing skill-building experience.
Eight community organizers gave “lightening” presentations on small scale, local projects and how they learned to bring them to life. These are a few of their lessons:
- Start small
- Use the project as a tool for community building
- Work across differences & be willing to go far beyond your comfort zone
- Be generous, be enthusiastic, be patient
- Document your work
- Fun is often underrated; it creates cohesion
- Create connection, create exchange, create selflessness
- Place function before form… if it isn’t working change it
- Create a volunteer database
- Leaders must work with everyone, at their level
- Become a tangible community asset
- When someone says I want to help, you know you’ve got a good idea. Then, get off your butt and get working
- Work “rhizomatically” (invisible connections, horizontally)
- Use metaphors and imagery to make sense of your idea
- Have social meetings with no expectations
- Bring chocolates
At lunch, we had Stone Soup from ingredients contributed by workshop participants. Actually we had two soups – which were both awesome!! (And yes, there were chocolates )
