Does your community of faith want to create positive change its neighbourhood, and wonder how to do so?
Does it wonder how to find other people who feel the same way, with whom it could partner?
Does it worry that, even if it had all the partners it could use and more, it wouldn't know what to do to create the most good for the people in the neighbourhood?
This bonus in the EDGE Signpost Series takes you through how to use two tools to facilitate the community engagement you need to get answers to these questions:
- Community Innovation Challenge: A Community Innovation Challenge is a gathering of creative, concerned citizens, whose purpose is to create a social enterprise. A social enterprise uses business practices to create change in the community, by making a positive impact on social, environmental and/or economic issues. The people who gather for the Community Innovation Challenge both generate the ideas for the social enterprise, supplemented by ideas gathered from Community Round Tables (more on them later!) that occurred early, and decide which idea to put in motion, based on financial sustainability, feasibility, impact, and level of community support available to work on the project. The chosen initiative gets $2500-$5000 in seed money and support from a mentor.
- Community Round Table: A Community Round Table is a chance for a community of faith/organization to be a rallying point in neighborhoods where a lack of conversation between people and organizations limits community abundance and prevents neighbors from working together. A community of faith or organization can use a Community Round Table to step into its critical role as lynchpin in the neighbourhood. Community Round Tables often turn into regular gathering sessions of community leaders, providing opportunities build trust, discover new ways to collaborate, and form genuine relationships
Use this Signpost to explore how communities of faith and community organizations can become powerful change agents.
Email Sarah at slevis@united-church.ca for more information or a scholarship.
