A Community Transformation Tree

Are you working to change your community for the better? This story is for you.

Do you support passionate changemakers across different communities? This story is for you too.

This story of a ‘community transformation tree’ illustrates what I think is needed to make radical change happen - change that will benefit everyone as we meet the challenges of our time.

It is based on my experiences of working to catalyse change over the last 20 years - learning many hard lessons along the way, while drawing ideas and insights from the wide range of wonderful people that I have been lucky enough to work with.

The way we have organised our human societies in the last couple of centuries has led to much good. It has also exacerbated deeply entrenched issues and inequities. Multiplied by the extraordinary acceleration to 8 billion or so of us today, and we find ourselves far short of all being able to live well in the 21st century, within a safe ecological operating space for humanity.

I don’t think these issues are lost on many people. But facing them is hard. And what is really hard, is to imagine how we would change everything that we know we need to change. What could this even look like? What do we need to do better and where should we focus our efforts?

For me, the metaphor of a fruit tree is a helpful model for the different elements that are needed to achieve successful change. A tree is a helpful reminder that what we see above the ground is only part of the whole, which all needs to work in synergy.

I hope that you will also find this story of a community transformation tree helpful in shaping your work. Suggestions for putting the ideas into practice are embedded in italics.

Community Transformation Tree — Image kindly created by Nikhil Chaudhary

Above the Ground

The starting point for our story, is that we must be on a mission to ensure that everyone in our community can live as well as possible now and into the future.

This mission and all of the resulting benefits for our community are represented by mangoes on a tree. If we are successful, then the change we bring about will provide enough sweet and nutritious mangoes for everyone. To achieve this, the whole tree needs to be strong and healthy.

The canopy of the tree represents a community’s place - the bio-physical world where we live, work and play. Eg. a neighbourhood, city, town or region.

The main branches make up the key systems in any place that we need to produce the ‘mangoes’. It is in all of these systems where we need to bring about changes that benefit everyone:

• Equitable access to adequate housing
• Regenerative food production
• Fair and prosperous local economies
• Equitable access to healthcare, employment and education
• Zero-emission mobility service systems
• Healthy, vibrant, creative and accessible public spaces
• Biodiverse natural infrastructure and ecosystem regeneration
• Efficient and healthy buildings
• Clean energy and water supplies
• Circular resource loops

Soon we will need all of these branches, and of course they are interconnected - but starting with a focus on a few priority branches is a healthy way to nurture a young tree. Other branches can then be grafted on as the tree grows stronger. This is important to keep in balance while developing a transformative change process - keep an eye on all that will be needed, while starting in the action areas where there is already the most enthusiasm amongst community actors.

Each main branch supports many smaller branches, from where the fruit really grow. These smaller branches are the myriad of actions and projects that we will undertake to bring about change. The leaves are solutions and expertise that generate the energy needed for growth and fruiting. The small branches and leaves are critical in producing our mangoes, but they aren’t viable without the rest of the tree. Remember this when designing your next action. Just focussing on the discrete elements of a project and technology are not enough. To be really useful projects need to fit into a bigger system and strategy.

Now imagine the lush and healthy tree canopy, laden with mangoes and providing everything that our community needs. Such a fine canopy will surely sit atop a broad, strong tree trunk.

In the community transformation tree, the trunk is made up of the organising structures and processes that the community uses to create change. If these are strong, though flexible enough, then the tree can support all of the healthy branches and fruit needed. If the trunk is not strong enough, then while a couple of branches may flourish initially the tree cannot really sustain enough branches and will be damaged by storms. In our communities we must invest in building the strength and resilience of our people, teams and organisations who hold and support the process of change.

Below the Ground

When we look at a tree, it is human nature to focus on what we can see above the ground. Yet, it is the root and soil system beneath the surface that defines whether the tree will really flourish and produce nutritious and healthy fruit.

So it is with the community transformation tree - we first and foremost need to nurture the root and soil system if we are to enable change to flourish. Below the ground we need more:

• Collaborative Communities - collaboration across the community is a critical foundation for agreeing on our goals and implementing the most effective ways of achieving them.
• Enabling Economies - focused work on improving how our economy and investment supports transformational and equitable change.
• Smarter Systems - using data and associated digital technology systems to bring about change more effectively and for the shared benefit of all.
• Municipal Momentum - local government can, and must, play a critical role in enabling change with tools such as policy and procurement. While current government structures help to enable the organising models in the trunk of the tree, they generally cannot fulfil all that is needed there.

Enablers of Change Framework

These Enablers of Change (further described in this article) are mostly a matter of how our societies organise and collaborate. If they are unhealthy then the roots become barriers to change and efforts on project ‘branches’ will not bear fruit. Change won’t really happen. These enablers need a lot of work, which must be interwoven into any good programme design. Or, if you want to evaluate a project or programme, my advice would be to look closely at what was done to nurture the ‘roots’.

Conditions below ground are also the hardest to change once a tree is planted. Properly preparing the ground requires upfront effort and investment. Rushing into planting lots of small seedlings in poor ground might look good in the short-term, but before long will lead to a lot of small dead trees that benefit no one. Funders that focus on investing in short-term quantity over quality tree planting are getting a poor return on investment in both the metaphorical and very real sense. Much more investment in people resources is needed to support strong enabler roots, along with an integrated canopy of projects. See this illustrative example of the potential difference.

If the roots are well nurtured, a sturdy trunk is established, and the initial tree branches flourish - then the tree will grow well. As the tree produces more and more fruits, these will provide nourishment to the community and the enabling systems. The tree therefore represents a virtuous system. One that will help us to accelerate change and progress over time.

The final layer of this story is how our individual community transformation trees can support each other. We now have amazing insights into how trees support and nurture each other in a forest ecosystem through a web of mycelium linking their root systems. Communities must also learn from each other, encourage each other, protect each other and grow together.

Organisations trying to help communities with transformative change can help to nurture this web between community trees. Where many such programmes have tended to focus on learning and exchange related to the branches - eg. how to do energy, food or transport projects; this story shows that there should be a pivot to focussing on helping communities to develop stronger enabling and organising systems.

Here is an example of how we are putting this model into practice to create 5 of the best cities to live, work and visit in South Eastern Europe.

Conclusion

I once met an orchardist in Kenya who had more than 20 varieties of mango growing on a single tree! He was dedicated to supporting the progress of his community through high value horticulture, experimentation and pushing the boundaries. His example of what could be possible stuck with me and helped to inspire this illustrative story.

Every flourishing community transformation tree needs such passionate changemakers to nurture and shape it. These are the people working from the ‘trunk’ who will hold the work both the above and below ground. If this is you, then my advice is to focus first and foremost on the systems below ground and building your trunk team. From this, change will flow much more easily.

If you are someone looking to invest in the changes that the world needs, then please invest in the changemakers who can make this metaphor a reality in their communities. We need a lot more of them.

Good luck! We must make a better world for us all. One mango at a time…

Mango orchard in Western Kenya

Thanks to Ellie Tonks and Nina Taylor for comments and advice on this article.