Paul Born provides a growing field of community change makers a fresh approach that will inspire people to consider solving community problems rather than just alleviating their effects.
Every week we read about another serious problem facing our communities. People are angry as poverty rates increase, racism hurts our neighbors, climate change worsens, and our young people face an increasing mental health stress. Our communities are looking for ways to do better but it seems we are just growing further apart. Incremental change led by well-meaning professionals is helping but it is not producing the kind of large-scale change we need. By strategically organizing our whole community and uniting what is strong around a life-giving common agenda, we can heal our broken communities.
Large scale community change is about identifying a community’s assets and uniting diverse people and organizations around a common agenda. It is also about developing a comprehensive change strategy that considers not only the problem we are trying to fix, but also its root causes. This kind of community change is about uniting the whole community by bringing leaders from business, human service organizations, and government together, then rallying them to work together with people who have lived experience (such as a cancer survivor or someone living in poverty) of the challenge (such as reducing poverty or cancer mortality rates) that the community hopes to overcome. The whole community works together, united in a common agenda toward a collective impact.
By harnessing the collective wisdom and diverse energy of our whole community, new ideas arise, our energy is restored, and our common resolve addresses entrenched community problems. More peaceful, equitable and vibrant communities emerge.