How Do We Create Frameworks to Allow Us to Come Together?
A collective creation by Archipelago
As community builders, we all agree we cannot work alone to successfully engage the critical social issues around us. While working together in groups is necessary, the process becomes more powerful when our groups become real communities.
Fabian Pfortmuller explains that a community transcends being a group when its members care about each other and feel they belong together. For this to happen, the foundation is trust. Trust in a community stems from the mélange of shared principles and values and helps establish authentic connections and relationships. Trust grows over time as these other elements are experienced and practiced by the ones involved. As a whole, they are in constant evolution; they are alive.
Many people are members of groups, but far fewer would consider themselves part of authentic communities, and fewer still would consider themselves part of authentic communities working together towards social change. So the question then becomes: How can we support the evolution of groups into communities so that they can be better catalysts to then help achieve greater levels of social change? With that in mind, the next step would be to work on frameworks to set the stage for these communities to arise. To illustrate how this can happen, we will discuss three different frameworks which demonstrate ways of community engagement.
Community Engagement on the Personal/Group Level
One of the most simple ways can start inside of our own houses by sharing the most basic thing: food! Potluck experiences can be powerful and very easy to organize. Again, Fabian Pfortmuller shared his experience hosting potluck dinners as a way to build his and his roomates’ community in NYC. He explains, “while we were meeting tons of amazing people in our early years in the city, it often didn’t lead beyond a superficial conversation.” With how busy life is for many, providing creative spaces for deeper conversations and connections to emerge becomes a vital challenge. In Fabian’s experience, the power of letting people take part and contribute made the pot luck experience even stronger. The realization that food was, in many ways, a metaphor for the hunger everyone had for connection, spurred on very real and meaningful conversation. Finally, potluck dinners do not require much more than some initial thoughts or questions to start the process and then the rest can transpire organically.
Community Engagement on the Organizational Level: Developing Staff for Others
Natalia Mehem works at ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy that describes itself as “a community of passionate individuals whose purpose is to revolutionize software design, creation and delivery, while advocating for positive social change.” Through a community driven mission, ThoughtWorks common goal is to better humanity through software and help drive the creation of a socially and economically just world. The organization built a culture where its “ThoughtWorkers” help clients to use technology to make an impact by believing in the power of it as tools for social change.
Among their shared core values are do the right thing; service to others and society over oneself; and personal and organizational transparency. Along with these values, they believe that it is also critical to understand that people have different paces and ways of engaging; therefore, they work with “development of journeys” and not career plans. From this, autonomy and the service to holistic goals takes precedence over achieving targets. This structure is, undoubtedly, the main element that helps new employees to develop trust and sense of belonging as soon as they join the company.
Community Engagement on the Organizational Level: Supporting Community to Serve the Greater Community
Robert Rivers and Fernanda M.B. Krum started Imagine Nation Brewing & Center for Community Transformation in Missoula, Montana, in 2015. Public houses have served as common grounds in communities around the world for centuries. RIvers and Krum realized that there was incredible amounts of potential in the model as a source for social change if intentional direction was imbued into the model. After three and a half years in operation, Imagine Nation has partnered with close to 500 organizations and hosted almost 2500 community events. Among the events, the brewery organizes — in collaboration with local stakeholders — community dialogues on critical issues, during which the taproom becomes a space for collective discourse and civil engagement. The taproom is explicitly a non-partisan zone and has clear guidelines on how to participate respectfully. In an ever-polarized society, several Missoula citizens have testified that the brewery feels like a safe space for them to express their thoughts and opinions and engage positively with others, even if their views differ.
Conclusions
Each of these examples are all based on creating safe spaces for people to come together. In their own way, each facilitates the deepening of human connections, builds authentic relationships, and instigates trust, care, and a sense of belonging. Though the methodology of each may be slightly distinct, all provide frameworks to support the evolution of groups into communities that can achieve greater levels of social change.
