Forum Activity for @wendy-mccaig

Asset Mapping for a School Community

ABCD and Education

[quote="Megan Frasik"]

Currently, I am creating an asset map for a school community in order to address community based assets that can be connected to a school. My goal is to create a visual that could be shared with the school with surrounding area assets as a way to connect the school to potential resources (especially thinking about the needs of the school and how those needs can be addressed by the community)

Any thoughts or ideas on tools for creating an asset map? 

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August ABCD & Rural Community of Practice

ABCD and Rural Communities

[quote="Wendy McCaig"]

This month we will be learning from Emiliano Espinosa about his project Coops to Co-Ops in rural Maryland.  Here is a draft of the Case Study that Emiliano will be sharing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MDJ5rx9c904mLncYr6onBiWOqxk16Y-9bEul3mp7CbE/edit?usp=sharing.   During our initial meetings the group expressed interest in helping each other craft our respective development stories in to case studies that could be used to enhance knowledge about ABCD & Rural communities.  We are very thankful for Emiliano and his willingness to write up his experience and share it with us!

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We had such a great time unpacking Emiliano's case study that we are going to do a follow up conversation in September focused on two questions - How do you cast and assure a citizen-driven vision upfront and how to retain that vision through a leadership transition.  These questions are both focused on the Ownership Principle.  We have created a google document for those interested in this conversation to share thier insights.  Here is the link to the shared document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ooKr-5fCE4zA4K79oa_QWnEiRNlZaYqWSqEv78E8qg/edit?usp=sharing

August ABCD & Rural Community of Practice

ABCD and Rural Communities

This month we will be learning from Emiliano Espinosa about his project Coops to Co-Ops in rural Maryland.  Here is a draft of the Case Study that Emiliano will be sharing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MDJ5rx9c904mLncYr6onBiWOqxk16Y-9bEul3mp7CbE/edit?usp=sharing.   During our initial meetings the group expressed interest in helping each other craft our respective development stories in to case studies that could be used to enhance knowledge about ABCD & Rural communities.  We are very thankful for Emiliano and his willingness to write up his experience and share it with us!

What does it mean to be Rural?

ABCD and Rural Communities

HI Derek,  As Deb shared, this is a very impressive analysis.  I think the one thing that I have found is a deeper connection to the natural world.  The daily sunrises, sunsets, droughts, floods, snow, the flow of the river, the fish, the wild flowers and on and on are far more a part of my life here then when I was in the city.  There is almost a spiritual connection to the land that I never felt in the city.  I think that is the greatest difference and benefit I have experienced. 

I had good, caring and deeply connected and generationally rooted neighbors in my previous community which was a historically African American community.  There were senior adults who had inherited the family home who had a lived memory of the place that is as rich as any rural community I have been a part of so I would challenge the assumption that non-rural folks are not as attached to place but I do agree it is more common in the rural environment. 

Case Study - Reimagining Rural Communities Using ABCD

ABCD and Rural Communities

I want to start by thanking Laverne and Heather for thier willingness to use this case study as our launching place for our Community of Practice.  As I read the case study, what I appreciated most was the specifics about the process.  It was laid out in a very concise and logical fashion.  The lingering question I have is about the community leaders.  What non-paid professionals used thier gifts to help advance the communities goals?  I see this is touched on in the lessons learned and conclusion, but I wonder if there is a story of a resident leader who emerged from this process that shows how their individual gifts were leveraged toward the communities goals?  I know like all our development efforts this is an unfolding one but the grassroots organizer in me would love to know how ordinary neighbors used thier gifts and grew as leaders. For me community leaders and their stories are the best way we have of demonstrating the ownership principle. 

Sharing our Context

ABCD and Rural Communities

I live on a 23 acre heavily forested ridge in a very rural part of central Virginia surrounded by horse, cattle, goat and chicken farms. The closest towns are Pamplin (population 200) 17 minutes south, Appomattox (pop 1,800) 25 minutes west and Farmville (pop 8,000 but more than ½ are college students) 30 minutes east.   My development interest lies with Pamplin which is on the endangered cities list for Virginia.  If you stroll down the old commercial corridor, most would pronounce this town dead.  All the buildings were abandoned until last week when a new ice cream parlor opened up and quickly became my favorite community asset!  There is a renovated train station that serves as a community hub and prior to COVID the community was sponsoring a monthly barn dance, weekly yoga and in the summer a farmers’ market. With Yoga returning last month it feels like this sleepy little town is starting to reawaken.  The yoga instructor, Mary Cush, just purchased one of the abandoned properties and wants to use if as a community gathering/farmer coop type space.  We are all excited to see where this story goes from here.  The strength of this community is its people and the beauty of the natural environment which is attracting a growing number of relocators like me.  I have offered to support Mary in her development efforts but unlike my coaching and consulting work in the city of Richmond, this is a very personal interest and the hat I am wearing is "Wendy the new neighbor on the hill." 

Principles from ebook Conversation

ABCD and Rural Communities

When I first saw this list I just LOVED the "wonder principle."  You can't do ABCD work without curiosity and a true authentic spirit of wonder.  I always feel like I am going on a treasure hunt when I start a listening project and get super excited when I start to see the collective gifts of a community become visible.  

Case Study - Reimagining Rural Communities Using ABCD

ABCD and Rural Communities

The top result from our interest survey to the question, "Which of the following best describes what you would find most helpful in your context" was "Case Studies from a rural context that include both story and specific tools/strategies." To start dive into a deeper understanding of this result, we did a poll and 100% stated what they were most interested in learning from case studies was "tools and strategies."  To get us rolling on this, Heather shared a rural case study that Tamarack helped to document and we committed as a group to read this case study and to share questions or comments about the case study in the comment section to this thread. 

You will find the case study here: https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/library/case-study-reimagining-rural-communities-using-abcd

We will use the questions and comments posed below to help shape our time together next month.  Please take a few minutes to comment or share a question that will help us mine the wisdom of this story or share how this story connects with your own ABCD experience. 

updated by @wendy-mccaig: 07/26/21 10:20:53AM

Sharing our Context

ABCD and Rural Communities

During our Community of Practice conversation today, I shared that the top response to the interest survey question, "Which of the following do you feel like you have something helpful to share with the group?" was "A deeper understanding of the variety of rural context and the strengths & challenges of each."  There was interest in the group to use this forum to share out respective contexts to begin to build a shared knowledge of the different types of rural context and to name the strengths and challenges we are all seeing in our respective context.  So please share in response to this question a one paragraph response that tells us about your rural context, its strengths and the challenges that you are facing. 

Principles from ebook Conversation

ABCD and Rural Communities

During our June Community of Practice gathering, Heather shared a document that has 8 principles of ABCD that were crafted by a global coalition that is working on the ebook project.  Here is a link to those principles that we are using in our group to describe what we mean by ABCD.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15xbmLeVZ0WbImR5Q8RsMLJGeFOew8RBbQZl0PQUKSwc/edit?usp=sharing

As we are sharing out stories, we want to encourage you to focus on stories that highlight one or more of these principles. 

As you read this document, which of these principles do you resonate with most?

updated by @wendy-mccaig: 07/09/21 08:48:02AM