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The Best Practice of using Best Practices

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Arthur CoddingtonCraigslist Foundation

Leo RomeroOur Blocks

The John Stewart Co

Peggy DuvetteWiserEarth.org

Time to stand up!

The Best Practice of using Best Practices

What is a Best Practice?

The Best Practice of using Best Practices

It's my best practice! Mine!!!

The Best Practice of using Best Practices

Best Practices inCommunity Empowerment

The Best Practice of using Best Practices

Co-presenters (in order of appearance)

Kevin Harris, principal of Local Level, and author of Neighborhoods.

Richard Layman, author of Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space.

Diane Dyson, Manager for Planning & Research at WoodGreen Community Services in Canada, and author of Belonging Community.

Matthew Singh of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Co-presenters

Christina Holt of Community Tool Box Services at the Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas.

Colin Gallagher, co-author, Neighborhood Problem Solver.

Lisa Palmer of KaBOOM!

Julian Dobson of Urban Pollinators Ltd, and author of Living with Rats.

Co-presenters

Mat Dryhurst of Craigslist Foundation, and LikeMinded.

David Crowley of Social Capital Inc.

Barbara Pantuso of Hey, Neighbor!

Paul Lamb of Man on A Mission.

Gabriel Mugar of the Syracuse University School of Information Studies.

Co-presenters

Daniel Homsey of the Neighborhood Empowerment Network.

Rebecca Sanborn Stone of the Orton Family Foundation and CommunityMatters.

Perpetuating discussion about best practices might simply perpetuate the over-bureaucratisation (and unnecessary professionalisation) of community action.

Perpetuating discussion about best practices might simply perpetuate the over-bureaucratisation (and unnecessary professionalisation) of community action.

It could help to reflect on worst practices.

The Community Tool Box is a global resource for free information on essential skills for building healthy communities. It offers more than 7,000 pages of practical guidance in creating change and improvement (available in both English and Spanish).

Through the Out of the Box competition, more than 300 stories of community change emerged from 42 countries around the world. These stories represent innovative approaches communities have taken to address local goals.

This resource includes reflection questions and tools to enable “what works” to work, likely relevant to any evidence-based or promising approach being implemented.

They publish a wide variety of workbooks (in print and online) about ground up community development that are focused on empowering people and harvesting social and organizational capital, not just money.

One of the best publications, with ideas for planning-related tools to engage citizens, identify what matters to communities, and plan for the future – especially in an international context.

This list of various webresources was built to support the resident engagement work of United Way Toronto as part of its Building Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy.

Imagine Canada is the voice for Canadian charities. It maintains an on-line searchable library, one section of which is dedicated to “promising practices.”

Systematic reviews are used to answer questions such as: Which program and policy interventions have been proven effective? Are there effective interventions that are right for my community? What might effective interventions cost; what is the likely return on investment?

PPS’s “How to Turn A Place Around” workshop and their “Place Game” are great tools for improving the quality of life in communities, working from the ground up. Their monthly e-letter always has good articles.

PPS’s resource collection includes how-tos, articles, principles, tools, and just about everything else a community would need to understand how placemaking can help and how to get started.

Great ideas and examples for developing public partnerships around ensuring that children in communities nationwide have access to great places to play.

From fundraising to volunteer recruitment, the Toolkit can help you take your project from start to finish with over a decade’s worth of KaBOOM! knowledge, advice, and best practices in building playspaces.

A book by David Robinson, founder of Community Links in east London. It spells out his experience of and vision for relationship-based approaches to work with families, children and young people.

Examples of how when Funders, Non Profits, Government Officials, Business and Civic Leaders get together regularly, things end up working better.

A good list of simple things anyone can do to build social capital in their community, from Harvard’s Saguaro Seminar for Civic Engagement in America – a project started by Robert Putnam.

An overview of the values and competencies that frame SCI’s work and training curriculum.

Provides a means for people in neighborhoods to address problems on their own, or jointly with their neighbors or with members of their local government. It shares key steps and guidance on how to organize and publicize, and gives easy access to local resources.

Practical assistance for those who want to make a difference – An online handbook published by the Vancouver Community Network, a non-profit Internet service provider.

Helps communities engage citizens and take control of their future. Chapters include network analysis and stakeholder identification, outreach and communications, storytelling, and engaging youth.

Empowersf.org is an online resource that helps residents and communities learn about ideas and programs that they can leverage to be more resilient.

Largest forum for hosts of neighborhood e-lists, placeblogs, and community social nets. Latest project is this survey which is designed to document the characteristics of place-based social networks online.

A perfect balance of analysis and ‘real stuff’, with guidelines as to how to develop a praxis cycle of assessment, idea generation and execution, and real world examples of sometimes staggeringly simple solutions to complex social problems.

Includes most everything you’d need to start and sustain a social enterprise.

130 Ways to Fund Your Social Venture, published in SocialEarth, a collaborative blog that focuses on businesses that are doing good through their work.x`

Competition entrants and winners offer many inspiring stories of people taking control of their communities and coming up with innovative solutions to both local and global challenges. The site doubles as a database of creative ideas for community change.

Helps local leaders and changemakers find collaborative, innovative grassroots solutions to community challenges. Includes podcasts of conference calls on topics ranging from local foods to placemaking to economic development.

Dialogue and democratic participation are at the heart of community empowerment, and NCDD is at the heart of this movement. More than 2,500 resources for dialogue and deliberation, including dialogue guides, case studies, tools, and evaluation methods.

Social media is important for community builders to understand, this is a good overview of the subject.

So many community initiatives stall because they fail to communicate with or reach citizens. Cause Communications publishes a Non-profit Communications Toolkit, and other resources related to networks, online outreach tools, and print and presentation design.

This database focuses on projects that use the arts to build dialogue, engage citizens, and work through difficult civic issues. Many of the projects are replicable, and inspire creative thinking about unorthodox community tools.

Records and celebrates 50+ examples of civic entrepreneurship, and reflects on their significance for our understanding of how people who are not part of formal public services, and not part of the traditional private sector, are making a difference.

Its experience shows just what ordinary people can do to address environmental issues through the shared experience of growing and producing local food. The website gives a flavour of their vision, achievements, and the reasons why they are attracting international interest.

It shows how local people can move in where retailers have failed and how temporary or ‘meanwhile’ projects (pop-up projects as they’re often known) can change the look and feel of an area and help prevent blight.

Documenting, Finding and Sharing Best Practices.

The Best Practice of using Best Practices

    

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