VIATT Community engagement weblog

VIATT is an organization that is lead by the wisdom of the community. To gather the wisdom of the community we are setting up five community circles, one in each region of Vancouver Island. Participation in these community circles is open to any Aboriginal community members, all that we ask is that you make a committment for two years to learn with us and help guide the work of VIATT with your best thinking. In exchange, we will cover your meeting expenses for four or so meetings per year and offer you a spot at the Art of Hosting training in November, in which we will learn together about effective ways to convene community conversations about child and family services.

We are currently in the process of setting up the community circles. If you would like to join your local community circle, please download this Expression of Interest, fill it in and send it back to Kris Archie. Alternatively, you can give Kris a call at (250) 588-4116 and answer the questions by phone.

Other documents of note:

• Community Circles Terms of Reference
• VIATT Community Linkage Strategy
• VIATT Community Linkage Approaches
• VIATT Community Linkage Goals

I wanted to let people know that i’ve added information to the updates page, specifically to the Community Circles page as well as the Regional Assemblies page.

In our work with communities on Vancouver Island, we have been deeply inspired by how the Art of Hosting has helped citizens and community members in Columbus, Ohio work together to build sustainable health care in that city.  We are in a learning relationship with these folks, sharing our experiences and pushing the envelopes together.

Now you can learn more about the Columbus work and draw some inspiration from it by viewing this three part video series wherein Toke Moeller and Phil Cass tell their story.

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

An Updates page has been created so that you can read the community linkage updates in smaller chunks and it’s easier to read the information that you are most interested in without wading through all the other writing.

Each section will be updated as new things happen and will be a little more in depth than the emailed updates as time goes on.

We are using facebook and now this weblog to begin to connect with the community on the work of VIATT.  For some more background about these kinds of technologies, have a read of this primer for non-profits.

As the role of the community circles has become clearer, it’s time to do more research into collaborative policy making. We can start with this Google search.

Excellent set of resources at Wikipedia

Reached some deep clarity last night with Dave on the role of the community circles.  Here are the notes from our conversation:

•  Community circles purpose is to participate in and influence the policy making process.  This is a clear and powerful purpose and it means that we can be clear that the work of the circles is not involved in governance, but is rather what the community really wants: a real voice in influencing policy.  This also relieves the circles from the burden of having to participate in needless technical conversations.
• Circles need to be put on the organizational chart so we can think about how they relate to the overall system.  What is immediately clear is that circles will relate to the Board and to the community linkage manager.  These are the two primary ways circles share their learning with the authority.
• Relations to the Board could include:
  • Annual reports to the Board to share with the Board what they are learning (and if the Board holds at least one meeting a year in each sub region, this is easy).
  • Helping the Board create and implement their “ends policy” work, by being an active partner in assisting the Board in these kinds of decisions.
  • Participating in Board established working groups to harvest community wisdom and perspectives on particular pieces of “ends policy” work.
• Relations through the community linkage manager include:
  • Feeding thinking and work into the authority through harvesting and tracking.
  • Participating within the formal policy making process for the authority
  • Contributing members and learning to policy working groups.
• In order to do this, it’s important to clarify the current policy making process for MCFD (is this easily done?) and to determine what will change about that process when a community based authority arrives on the scene.  In many ways the litmus test for the authority wil be on how well it involves the community in actual policy making.  This is our role.
• The work between now and April 1 is really to set up and create a hosting culture within the community circles system.  This will probably involve asking the circles to help us design a community-based policy making system, and that is a pretty fricking exciting inquiry.

At the art of hosting in Belgium we were discussing the art of governance and the group I was with went through an exercise where they imagined themselves as members of a community circle meeting for the first time and they thought through some of the questions that they might have.

Here are some of the questions:

• Who is here with us?
• What are the practices with which we will ground ourselves to go through the chaordic journey of giving birth to our work?
• Who is our Elder?
• What am I seeking to learn? What is my quest in doing my community services in being part of this circle for a couple of years? What is the learning that we may accomplish and pass on to other circes coming after us as new and simpler and more natural governance systems come into place?
• The more attention and care that can be given to a good sense of timing is more than half the work. Who among us would offer to be guardians of the timing of things?
• What are our stories? Who are your children? Why is this important? What is expected of me? Do I undestand the committment I am making? Do we understand the committments we are making? What are the possibilities beyond the problems? What is the focus we need to make us more resiliant? What are the threats and can we make ourselves more resiliant against them?
• How has this conversation changed things? How are things different now than they were before we met?

Here are the two flipcharts we took notes on:

• Art of Governance
• Imagining the circles from the community members perspective.

Something sent in from the Art of Hosting list:
Sociocracy: Principles and Methods of Organization * http://www.sociocracy.info/

[ABOUT] Sociocracy: The Four Governing Principles * About Sociocracy: http://www.sociocracy.info/about.html
1. Consent governs policy decision-making. Consent means there are no argued and paramount objections to a proposed decision.

MORE RESOURCES:
` Overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy
` Home of Sociocracy: http://www.sociocracy.biz/