Evolving our Systems

What role does community innovation play?

Despite how appealing the old normal appears to many now, we know that it wasn’t sustainable, and this crisis created the conditions for evolving our systems.

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We need to think about what we value and what we want to keep.

While we affirm what we want to keep – we have to opportunity to decide what we can let go.

The COVID-19 catchphrase “we’re all in this together” is one we need to strongly adopt as we collectively work through the big decisions we need to make.

This notion directly aligns with community-led development (CLD). A ‘shared vision’ is one of CLD’s core principles, and we’ve always viewed CLD as an essential asset that must be activated to ensure Aotearoa is a thriving, inclusive and resilient place.

We need to focus our attention on HOW we do things and WHO matters.

An outstanding element of New Zealand’s affective response to COVID 19 has been the community’s response. The cumulation of leadership exercised at all levels, from our Prime Minister, government officials, academics, business leaders, and scientists – to people in streets and within their household bubbles.

We are seeing and experiencing hundreds of instances across the country where people have mobilised and driven the support required in their place, shaped by the guidelines provided by such leadership. The local community has become a critical setting.

But is the value of this critical community-led approach fully understood?

Let’s take the example of Meremere locals, who quickly came to terms with the consequences of level 4 lockdown in their town, providing essential provisions – food and sanitation parcels – while also looking ahead to what’s next.

Meremere is self-organising, using opportunities and their connections between one another and into Government, philanthropy and other support organisations to both respond and plan ahead.

This is often the case – local knowledge and wisdom about what’s needed and what works ‘at ground zero’ leads in crisis response. However, the risk is that at some point ‘the outside system’ may take over and that valuable local leadership, foresight and capacity are lost.

Our once in a generation opportunity.

The COVID-19 crisis has forced us all to be courageous and innovative. To take risks and share more power with local communities. This can be harnessed to make the necessary fundamental changes to the political, economic, social, cultural and environmental systems for the health of our planet. Entrenched systems which for so long have hampered our best efforts to tackle big issues like child poverty, climate change, youth unemployment and family violence – they need to adapt!

Localism, participatory democracy, authentic cross-sector engagement and collaboration, citizen empowerment, and strengths-based ways of working are just some of the approaches that need to become front and centre.

Long-term regional restoration will require more than a focus on a limited view of the economy and big investments in ‘shovel ready’ physical infrastructure projects. Retaining and further embedding a holistic wellbeing lens into policy, planning, and investment is essential!

This eco or adaptive cycle is a very useful framing for thinking about these opportunities ahead of us.

While central government clearly has a significant influence on resources, policy and regulation, the choices, actions, and decisions we make as individuals, families, businesses, iwi, councils, churches and communities also determine the outcomes that will follow.

Inspiring Communities has our part to play. We want to ensure that locally-led insights, evidence and intelligence around what works – and what Aotearoa should do differently – is gathered and amplified at this critical time of transition.

We are all part of the ‘system’

Thoughts and perspectives from Inspiring Communities’ Strategic Lead, Rachel Roberts and National Coordinator, David Hanna.

Kindness and Manaakitanga – Donna Provoost

Pulling together to strengthen our communities and improve child wellbeing.

Wellbeing research has documented the importance of family and key trusted adults in children’s lives to support building their sense of belonging and identity.

We want children and young people to be accepted, respected and connected.

This is a vital part of their sense of identity and belonging that builds strong protective factors, helping children deal more effectively with stressful events and supporting their wellbeing. In fact, it is one of the six outcome areas of the New Zealand Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy.

Researchers have spent a lot of effort looking at why children don’t develop a sense of identity and belonging. One aspect is the community and social environment that children experience every day. Micro-aggressions are brief andcommon, daily verbal, behavioural and environmental communications that transmit hostile, derogatory or negative messages to exclude and marginalise others.

This phenomenon has been widely studied in its contribution to racism and socialexclusion, where many small hostile acts build a sense of exclusion and hate. Could a different community and social environment, one where many small acts of kindness, respect and care are directed at children and young people, build their sense of belonging, inclusion and love?

Wellbeing research has documented the importance of family and key trusted adults in children’s lives to support building their sense of belonging and identity. The limited research on the broader environment suggests that casual interactions with others in their communities does send powerful messages to children.

Community development research also points in this direction. The Inspiring Communities ‘quadrants of change’ tool suggests four dimensions of change to consider — personal, relational, structural and cultural. The personal attitudes, behaviours and actions of individuals are important on their own, and can also influence the ties, connections and trust in the community (relational) and the culture of the community.

The research and evidence from these different disciplines all points us toward small acts of kindness, respect and care for others — brief and common daily verbal, behavioural and environmental communications that transmit kindness, inclusive and positive messages to others.

Kindness, respect and care for others is central to the Maori concept of manaakitanga. This also aligns with English concepts of benevolence, and is part of what is needed for children and young people to feel accepted, respected and connected in the New Zealand Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy.

Kindness, respect and acceptance from many people can send re-enforcing positive messages in our communities. When these positive messages are targeted at children and young people, this will help demonstrate our value in children as taonga (treasures with inherent value), and support them to feel manaakitanga (kindness, respect and care) for others.

Community kindness is an action we can all take to build this sense of belonging and more inclusive communities. This moves beyond ‘random acts of kindness’ — non premeditated, inconsistent actions designed to offer kindness towards others. Community kindness is premeditated, consistent and targeted to those who are most likely to have weak sense of belonging — including children and young people.

Reflecting on our current verbal, behavioural and environmental communicationswith children and young people will be a start. From there, we can set community-wide goals to transmit kindness, inclusive and positive messages to children each day.

We want children and young people to have a strong sense of belonging and connection — these are important protective factors that supports their wellbeing. And the power is in each of us, through our causal interactions with children and young people everyday, to demonstrate our care and acceptance, and welcome them in our community and society.

Community kindness is a solution to improving child wellbeing that we all can participate in, every day.

Donna Provoost is Director of Strategy, Rights & Advice with the NZ Children’s Commissioner, and Chair of Inspiring Communities. Donna is currently in the USA on a Harkness Fellowship, investigating ways to improve child wellbeing by promoting their sense of belonging and identity.

I’ve been thinking…

A blog from Inspiring Communities’ Megan Courtney – August 2019

Last year I was invited to join a small group of courageous leaders to convene a community conversation that asked – “what went wrong and what did we learn, so that other communities might benefit from our experience.” I use the word courageous deliberately because this is a brave thing to do.

In my decade of supporting CLD nationally, this was the first time I’d heard of or been part of a such an intentional learning process. Promoting and sharing what’s working is easy. Trying to respectfully mine and harvest from multiple truths, perspectives and deep hurt isn’t.

Not everyone invited came but those who did had the chance to share their observations on the great and the not so, as well as reflect on what Taita’s experience might mean for CLD more broadly. One of the outcomes from the day was Great Start – Reflections and Learnings from a Final Kitchen Conversation. The longer paper is well worth a read. While it provides no simple reasons or answers, helping craft it really got me thinking.

One thing that stood out from reflecting on Great Start’s Journey was how outdated our model of community governance really is – especially when it’s applied narrowly to CLD. We typically see effective community governance as the small group of people mandated to meet monthly and give approval for what’s happening in an organisation or community project. They’re there to give legitimacy and keep things safe. Handing the Great Start initiative ‘back’ to the community (local residents) to manage and govern was seen as the right thing to do – but was it?

If CLD is all about maximising community participation, reaching out to voices not normally heard, recognising everyone as a potential leader, enabling local expression of Te Tiriti principles, valuing distributed leadership, encouraging new collaborations, changing power dynamics and bravely innovating in real time, why do we still see that a small group of elected (or appointed) local resident leaders as the right form of governance for CLD? I don’t think it is. It’s time to generate and trial some new approaches and we don’t have to start from scratch. We can lean on learning and experience from:

• Fundholders currently supporting locally-led initiatives in Aotearoa with a range of admin (eg. financial, employment) and light touch strategic support.
• Constellation governance
• Collective impact

If you’ve been thinking about this I’d love to hear from you too!

Megan Courtney is a founding member of the core team and a co-director of Inspiring Communities.

Reflections and Learning from Great Start Taita: A Final Kitchen Table Conversation

While often raising more questions than answers, the report highlights some useful flags and reality checks for everyone working in CLD.

The report was curated by Great Start Champions Karen Clifford, Jenny Blagdon, Thalia Wright and Megan Courtney, with the support of Inspiring Communities.

Click here if you want a short overview of the Great Start report.

Click here to see the full report.

Our Top Ten Tips

Here are our Top tips for getting started in community-led development.

Localism and Devolution

New Zealand has a system of multi-level government, with central government having responsibility for matters of national significance and local government matters of local or regional significance. And, like similar democracies how responsibilities are distributed across orders of government – is a constant matter of debate. 

Inspiring Communities’s Megan Courtney contributed to this paper – her piece titled A Focus on the How not the Who – examines localism through a CLD lens. An aspect often neglected – but vital as we consider alternatives to the failing top-down approach to change.  

Click here to read the paper.

I’ve been thinking… about Aotearoa: Inclusion Pioneers

By Canadian Evaluator, Mark Cabaj– 26th June 2017

I spent the second week of February 2017 visiting and working with social innovators and evaluators in New Zealand. Like the three visits before this one, I was eager to (a) share what I and my colleagues are learning about collective impact, social innovation, neighborhood renewal and developmental evaluation in Canada and (b) to learn more about how Kiwis are working together to strengthen communities and tackle tough problems.

And, like all the visits before this one, I suspect that I left the land of the long white cloud with more insights than I left behind.

“This is particularly true in the area of building communities that are inclusive of indigenous and non-indigenous communities, something that New Zealand is light years ahead of North America.”

During a 2007 evaluation workshop hosted by Inspiring Communities in Hamilton, Michael, a Maori elder started the session with a simple question: “How can and should evaluation deal with different cultures?”. The entire audience nodded their head in unison and then snapped back to me, hoping that I could offer a helpful response.

My answer was simple, ‘All evaluation is cultural — whether it be ethnic, sectoral or geographic — and each has a different way of knowing, different ways of gathering and making sense of information. Canada and New Zealand are heavily influenced by a Euro-centric scientific management culture that privileges quantitative, standardized data, preferably produced through randomized controlled trials, but that is only one, sometimes narrow, world view. Evaluations are always stronger if they include multiple cultural lenses – they reveal different things’.

“So how do you make sure you are taking these different cultural perspectives into account when doing an evaluation?” he asked.

‘Make sure that you have someone on the evaluation team that represents the cultures in which you are working. This means a Maori evaluator if working in Maori communities, a public administrator if working with government, and an engineer if you working with engineers. In northern Canada, for example, indigenous researchers are working with industry and academic researchers to provide indigenous knowledge on the impact of mining operations on the natural habitat and eco-systems, and they are finding things that mainstream researchers have missed entirely’, I replied.

Michael nodded, and then said, “That seems like part of the answer, but I think we need much more than that, but I am not sure what”. I agreed and said that evaluators in Canada were only beginning to wrestle with this challenge and the issue rarely ever came up in a workshop or design discussions. In fact, the last time I was with a group struggling with how to embrace multiple, very diverse perspectives in an evaluation of a program in an indigenous community, one person advocated that we look to the “pioneers of inclusion” in New Zealand for possible solutions.

On the plane ride home, impressed with the workshop discussions, I committed to being a lot more intentional and systematic about culture, power and embracing multiple perspectives in my own work.

Fast forward ten years to February 2017, my fourth visit to New Zealand, and another round of evaluation workshops in Auckland, New Plymouth and Wellington. Like a decade earlier, participants were receptive to the various techniques explored in the workshop, some of which included North American examples of inclusive and culturally responsive evaluation. And, yet again, I learned that the country’s social innovators and community builders were far ahead of their Canadian cousins.

Workshop participants shared examples of home-grown evaluation practices that systematically integrate Maori, Pakeha and Pacific Island perspectives, principles methods.

“We discussed the ground-breaking ideas of Kiwi thought leaders, such as those of Linda Tuhiwei Smith (Decolonizing Methodologies: Research & Indigenous People) and Nan Wehipeihana and Kate Mckegg (Developmental Evaluation Exemplars: Principles in Practice).”

Over a break in the proceedings, three young evaluation practitioners gave me a “google tour” of all the local assessments done with a strong sensitivity to culture and community.

When I asked workshop participants what was behind the vibrant practice in the country, a seasoned practitioner responded: “Well, many of us came to the conclusion – some sooner, others later – that while we used to do “to” and “for” communities – particularly Maori communities – we now need to do “with” and “as” the communities in which we work. In fact, it’s so important to us that inclusion and multicultural responsiveness are principles and standards of the Australia-New Zealand Evaluation Association.”

On this plane ride home, I realized that for all those people who are clear “why” evaluation practices need to be dramatically more inclusive and culturally relevant, but struggle with “how” this might happen (which includes me), they need look no farther than the pioneering community builders, social innovators and evaluators in Aotearoa.

*Mark Cabaj is President of the consulting company From Here to There and an Associate of Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement. Mark has first-hand knowledge of using evaluation as a policy maker, philanthropist, and activist, and has played a big role in promoting the merging practice of developmental evaluation in Canada. As outlined in this blog he is also a regular visitor to New Zealand working with Inspiring Communities to help grow effective developmental evaluation practice here as well.  M

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Embracing Complexity

To Embrace Community We Must Embrace Complexity

Recently we were lucky enough to have David Hanna, Director of Wesley Community Action and Practice Leader at Inspiring Communities, join us for lunch to discuss the complexity of systems and the resilience and potential of communities. During this thought provoking discussion David challenged our mind-sets around how we take part in making positive change.

Introducing himself with the statement that “vocation is what we give to the world, career is what we get out of it”, David proceeded to distil the insights from his vocation in community-led change.

David’s opening question to us was to reflect on the past week and answer, “what are your touch points with community?” We floundered initially on the concepts of community service, and then we quickly moved to the reality that community is all around us; that it is the people we are with. Aleisha from the team captured it as “community is the relationships, the connections we have with people, with place and with organisations”.

The following key points really resonated with the team:

• Community can be a verb rather than a noun. Like fish and the sea, we can never not be in a community. We are a social species and we don’t exist if we don’t have community. Much like water in the sea, we don’t see community, we struggle to understand it and we don’t know how to measure it.
• There is a relationship between community and the economy. We struggle to measure a community – it just is. We can measure the unease that occurs when we don’t have community.
• A community perspective holds many different truths. Collaboration is when you are working with people who have a truly different perspective.
• To embrace community, we must embrace complexity. We should not oversimplify too early and must hold the creative tension.
• A stable community can handle a lot of complexity (the definition of a resilient community). When we have communities in chaos, the continuity of knowledge and understanding within the system, and between community members, is missing and therefore the complexity becomes overwhelming.
• Poverty accelerates the rate of change in a community and therefore has a destabilising and potentially debilitating impact. On the other hand, communities have an amazing and surprising capacity to self-support when given the right conditions.
• We default to thinking that money is needed in communities, but community based action has been the most effective.
• We think we can direct through programmes and interventions but we may only disturb the system and set off a range of consequences we may not have planned or foreseen.

Our favourite insight was broader than community, and took a national or even global view. We tend to bring a binary lens to complex systems, even though complexity inherently resists binary classification. Science and research has moved beyond binary classification, but we persist in doing this. Interestingly, our fundamental systems set up a binary construct, between political parties, in our justice system, within our social welfare systems. Our democratic systems need to evolve to embrace a complexity mind-set.

“Living systems can only be disturbed, never directed” – Maturana and Varela

Thank you again David for inspiring and sharing such valuable insights with the team.

Ngā mihi

Adithi Pandit
Partner – Strategy and Operations Consulting

Republished with permission from Deloitte on 15th July 2018. The original post can be found here.

How do we grow a movement for child wellbeing?

I first became involved with the Child Rich Communities project while working for the coalition Every Child Counts. The coalition was focused on improving child wellbeing and, in particular, ending child poverty. Needless to say, child poverty is one of Aotearoa’s biggest issues!

“In 2017 it was reported that 290,000 children were living in income-based poverty and 135,000 children were living in material hardship.” *

While working in advocacy, I was among those who noticed that responses to child wellbeing tended to focus mainly on advocacy and targeted intervention by government, NGOs and the private sector. Both advocacy and intervention are incredibly important and need to be in the spotlight. However, there’s another strand of work that is not always so visible, but is equally important – there are many people working in community-led ways throughout Aotearoa.

This work is improving the lives of children and their families. It became clear to me that when thinking about big issues like child poverty, we need a raft of different policies in different areas, but equally important is changing how we approach the issues, not just changing the policies. Many of these issues have been with us for a while, through successive governments, different policies and multiple reforms. As the saying goes, you can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

Community-Led Development in Aotearoa

It’s time to focus on doing things differently. It’s time to better support communities to decide what solutions will work best for them, to share power, to let them make their own decisions and to create resources to enable locally-led responses and action. This represents quite a different tack than the traditional approach to policy, which tends to be top-down and service-focused, with solutions largely developed away from the very people it’s all about.

I believe that the traditional approach to policy by itself will not generate the scale of change needed. I believe that big change comes from supporting communities to lead. Local whānau and communities have a unique basket of skills, knowledge, strengths and assets which are fundamental to achieving long-term positive change in their places.

What is Child Rich Communities all about?

It’s about growing a movement of people who think and work in community-led ways to improve child, family and whānau well-being. It builds on research with ‘Bright Spot’ communities and initiatives proudly taking community-led action in their places. It offers a framework, or way of working, driven by a set of principles that support people in local places to make positive changes for themselves, their children, their family and the wider community.

Importantly, there is no single model or definition for what a Child Rich Community is. Across Aotearoa, there are many community-led initiatives making positive change for local children and families. They all look very different, with local contexts, histories, experiences and resources shaping what happens in each place. This approach has a long history in Aotearoa and a big future.

I attended the Weaving our Strengths Forum earlier this year (2018), where a range of stakeholders from the children’s sector, government, philanthropic sector, service providers, community groups and those with lived experiences got together at a one-day hui to talk about what’s needed to reduce child poverty and improve child well-being. In listening to different people talk, what I heard again and again was the need for strong, connected communities and the power of community to make a difference. People were saying things like:

What does change look like?

In my opinion, government needs to sit with community and have a real discussion about how it (and others) can support community-led development (CLD) and Child Rich Community initiatives. First and foremost, government needs to gain an understanding of how it can effectively support locally-led action. Government needs to allow communities to own their own projects and to make their own decisions. Communities know what they need. We just have to listen. Especially, government needs to actively consider the role of CLD in securing better child well-being.

So where’s the movement at now? We are grateful to have received a grant from S.K.I.P to run the webinars and workshops this year and to set up four new regional ‘communities of practice’, aimed at peer-led support for those active in the community-led development/child well-being space. You can find more information on these activities here.

But a movement takes people. This is where you come in! We’re currently focused on raising awareness of Child Rich Communities, and supporting and connecting like-minded people, organisations and initiatives across Aotearoa so that we can all learn from each other.

Does this sound like something you’re interested in? 

Is this something you’re currently doing in your community?

Lisa Woods, Child Rich Communities Lead, Inspiring Communities

*Figures from the Child Poverty Monitor

Written in August 2018

Child-Rich Communities Webinars

The overarching goal of the Child Rich Communities (CRC) project is to grow a movement of people who think and work in community-led ways to improve child, family and whānau well-being.

Our CRC 2018 webinars combined theory and experience, with community-based practitioners from diverse communities across Aotearoa sharing their experience. There was also space for questions and discussion on what’s making a difference for children and families.

David Hanna from Inspiring Communities facilitated each webinar and presented on the Child Rich Communities framework. Over the course of the webinar series, each of the guiding principles that make up the Child Rich Communities approach was covered.

Connect and Empower! The first webinar explored the principles of engagement, empowerment and connection. Julia Milne (Common Unity) and Steve McLuckie (Shore to Thrive) presented.

It’s all about relationships. The third webinar explored the principles of being relationship focused and the importance of collaboration. Lisa McKenzie (Hokonui Highway Project) and Erena Mikaere Most (Ruapehu Whānau Transformation Plan) presented.

The big picture. The second webinar explored the principles of thinking and working holistically and being responsive. Ginny Larsen (Mairehau Neighbourhood Trust) and Jane Denley and Adam Rivett (Waimate Parenting Hub) presented.

Communities of Practice

Our Communities of Practice aim to support those already working in community-led ways. Through peer learning, in groups of 6 – 8 people, we aim to strengthen everyone’s confidence, skills and knowledge and build ongoing local support networks. Currently, we have three communities of practice operating: one in Wellington, one in Christchurch and two online. If you’d like to know more, please contact us today.

Workshops

These workshops explored what a Child Rich Community (CRC) is, what the CRC practice principles are all about and how local people and organisations can work together to support the development of CRC thinking and practice locally.

Watch some of the Bright Spot communities

Check out locals leading change in their communities. Hear their stories and share their insights into the rewards and challenges of using community-led approaches to support children and families.

About community led development

Meet the Bright Spots

South Alive Story

Randwick Park Story

You an also check out our Bright Spots webinar from 2017. In this webinar, we examined three lessons that emerged from the Bright Spots report. Lizzie McMillan from Wesley Action Waitangirua and Jenny Jurgens from Whanganui Central Baptist Kindergarten provided great case studies to demonstrate these learnings in practice.

Does this sound like something you’re interested in? Get in touch and join us. Or if all of this sounds like what you’re currently doing in your community, we’d love to tell your story. Contact Lisa Woods, lisa.woods@inspiringcommunities.org.nz, 021 1228 273.

Want to hear more about how people around the country are mobilising their community to improve child well-being? Read about the values and the history of the project here.