On May 21st the Neighbourhood Small Grants team hosted a one-day event to bring together coordinators, Resident Advisory Committee members and project leaders representing all the communities with whom we currently partner. The Summit included opportunities to connect and share information, talks and skill building workshops.
Storytelling and skill building
We invited attendees to take part in workshops designed to help them understand how to organize even better community focused projects, and how to tell that story to the people around them to attract support for their ideas.
Highlights on the day included a keynote speech from Al Etmanski exploring how we can turn our ideas and actions into building stronger communities and long-term social change. A workshop by David Roche focused on creating a safe and encouraging environment for people to learn how to build powerful stories to share.
Stacy Bestard led an Asset Mapping for the Community session, helping participants to identify the resources and capacities that already exist in the community such as: skills, knowledge and experience of local residents; community association, physical structures and natural resources.
Finally, we learnt about Team Building and Group Dynamics with Keiron Simons, exploring questions including What does “neighbourhood” look like to you and what might it look like to your neighbours; what can you do to give team members, volunteers and project participants a sense of “welcome”; and what can you do to keep people feeling connected and involved in community?
Video: Sharing skills and knowledge
We also took time out during the day to show some of our latest Neighbourhood Small Grants videos to including “Sharing Skills and Knowledge”. Learning from others in the community was a key theme for the day, and this video shows what a powerful experience that can be for both the people learning, and the people sharing.
What did you think?
Did you attend the Neighbourhood Small Grants Summit? Read what one participant had to say about the day: http://blog.thriftybydesign.ca/2015/05/vancouver-foundations-nsg-summit.html
We also got some great feedback via our survey of participants. They scored us 4.5 out of 5 for providing “an opportunity to connect with my peers” and 4.6 out of 5 for “learning something new at the summit”.
But we are always looking for ways to improve. You can email feedback to us at nsg@vancouverfoundation.ca
Thank you to everyone that took part on the day.
