Community Building Blocks

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.

“A wise man who builds his house on the rock, so that when storms come it will not fall” Matthew 7:24 Building your Community needs to be built on good foundations. In the Community Building Blocks, we dig deep to laying down solid foundations so that the storms that will come will not destroy your community and that it will stand. What is it that we are building and why are we building it?? We look at important aspects of what is means to be a community. Once the foundations are laid, we set a clear common direction. The vision of your community is gaining a clear vision of where you want to go together as a community, having a common vision which everybody understands, and everybody can find their place and get involved. Establish your vision and set your goals to enable you to reach your vision. After you have set your vision design your structure and establish pillars that will help you to reach your vision.

"A wise man who builds his house on the rock, so that when storms come it will not fall" Matthew 7:24 Building your Community needs to be built on good foundations. In the Community Building Blocks, we dig deep to laying down solid foundations so that the storms that will come will not destroy your community and that it will stand. What is it that we are building and why are we building it We look at important aspects of what is means to be a community. Once the foundations are laid, we set a clear common direction. The vision of your community is gaining a clear vision of where you want to go together as a community, having a common vision which everybody understands, and everybody can find their place and get involved. Establish your vision and set your goals to enable you to reach your vision. After you have set your vision design your structure and establish pillars that will help you to reach your vision.

A comprehensive text on the theory and practice of public participation Written by two leaders in the field, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy explores the theory and practice of public participation in decision-making and problem-solving. It examines how public participation developed over time to include myriad thick, thin, and conventional opportunities, occurring in both face-to-face meetings and online settings. The book explores the use of participation in various arenas, including education, health, land use, and state and federal government. It offers a practical framework for thinking about how to engage citizens effectively, and clear explanations of participation scenarios, tactics, and designs. Finally, the book provides a sensible approach for reshaping our participation infrastructure to meet the needs of public officials and citizens. The book is filled with illustrative examples of innovative participatory activities, and numerous sources for more information. This important text puts the spotlight on the need for long-term, cross-sector, participation planning, and provides guidance for leaders, citizens, activists, and others who are determined to improve the ways that participation and democracy function. Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy: Helps students and practitioners understand the history, theory, and practice of public participation Contains a wealth of case studies that explore the application of public participation in different settings Covers vital issues such as education, health, land use, and state and federal government Has accompanying instructor resources, such as PowerPoint slides, discussion questions, sample assignments, case studies and research from www.participedia.net, and classroom activities.

As the prime minister stated, Canada's small- and medium-sized community organizations [SMOs] are key determinants of the strength of our communities and the quality of our lives. Despite this, we know less about them and provide much less public support for them than for their private sector kin, the SMEs [small- and medium-sized enterprises]. A path-breaking publication from Imagine Canada and CPRN argues this should change. Building Blocks for Strong Communities, a multi-volume study, compares the characteristics, economic and social contributions, and public policy supports for SMEs and SMOs in Canada and in international context. It finds significant gaps in our knowledge of community organizations and advocates better supports for them.

.

This inspiring work explores various ways communities can emerge from the fragmentation that plagues modern society. Block examines a way of thinking that creates an opening for authentic communities to exist, and details what each individual can do to make that happen.

"Examines how a capacity for mobilizing community participation can be built into a project's design and staffing. This paper answers that question by analyzing, step-by-step, one case rich in experience: the decentralization project in Mexico and its predecessor, the PIDER (Programa Integral para el Desarrollo Rural) program. The time span of this series of projects stretches from the early 1970s to the early 1990s"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.