The Big Picture

Library Resource Toolkit

This Library toolkit is intended to support Fellows in their Community Engagement work. Here, there will be details on our principles, practices, and tools for your work.

Goals

The goal of our fellowship and work as part of Move for Americas mission is to become leaders that pave way for innovation, trusted relationships within communities and cultures.

Along with this we have a set of agreed upon goals and expectations for each other:

What is Community Engagement?

The process that seeks to engage diverse and divergent community voices to achieve long-term and sustainable well-being for all community members, through equitable decision making processes, deepended relationships, discourse, and implementation.

On Tuesday August 2nd one of our host sites, Camdentown, hosted Minneapolis' National Night Out event with the help of this years fellow Emily.

Pictured from left to right:

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Houston White, Emily, Libby, April Riordan.

Values

C(ommunity): Acknowledge differences in thinking and behavior as well as cultural and ethnic diversity to ensure respect and dignity.

A(ccountability): Take responsibilities for your actions and impact on others by using skills to prioritize community needs.

R(espect): Be confident in your ideas while understanding alternative perspectives.

G(rowth): Continuously strive to expand community knowledge from using mistakes as learning opportunities.

O(penness): Use open communication and take risks that include hard conversations about long term solutions.

Who is Community Engagement for?

In our community engagement work its important we can identify the two stakeholders.

Individuals & groups most impacted by issue

residents
faith based groups
racial, ethnic, & cultural groups
institutions; schools

See more content here!

Individuals in power

hold all the power for policy and decision making
government officials, businesses, leaders.

Why?

Think of the Bigger Picture - What is the successful outcome?

We build cohesive communities
improved results
ensures communities have accessibility and empowerment
assists local governments in promoting sustainable decision making

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Communication & Conflict

There are four types of communication styles - direct or indirect & expressive or restrained.

Direct conflict includes: face-to-face resolution, precise language, persuasion through resizable argument.

Indirect: rely on outside parties, discretion in voicing goals, "talking around" disagreement.

Expressive: overt emotions, expansive vocabulary, sensitive to constraints.

Restrained: disguised emotions, internalizing, sensitive to hurting feelings.

Skills for communication building:

Mirroring helps support the speaker by establishing presence & supports the listener by focusing on listening/description.

Summarizing includes

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Incorporating Asset Framing

Asset-Framings goal is to give your primary mind a fuller set of information and associations when decision making.

How can we move from deficit framing? Deficit framing: defines people by their challenges , assign negative qualities to certain groups, and creates cynicism.

Therefore in our community engagement work we should be sure to define people by their aspirations, match positive qualities and create hope.

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Professionalism

Professionalism can look different depending on the workplace and your team. Its important you understand the expectations of your host site. Our basic expectations are to respect our team, regularly participate, and maintain responsibilities.

Remote

Working from home or remotely may have different professionalism expectations: