"They Ask Experts to each of Their Meetings": Community Members Becoming Community Leaders

Interesting community engagement happenings here.

Though we didn't design it this way, our CI initiative is largely white women, many of whom are social workers, educators, and community members who don't work during the day.  This composition has created the unintended situation of lots of white people talking about what to do for black and brown community members. This is a huge equity no-no, totally antithetical to our stated goals. So we have labored intensively on how to incorporate participation, feedback, and leadership from members of the neighborhoods who stand to benefit from the resource mobilization of organizational partners.  This effort is exacerbated by the fact that all of the white ladies, by and large, live in wealthy neighborhoods.  The wealth and race divide here is stark. So we're lacking the grassroots appeal but more importantly the expert knowledge of our lower-income and black and brown neighborhoods.

Until about 3 months ago.

Community Engagement Approach 1: Train Leaders from the Grassroots Up

For the past year or so we have been working with a group of residents who applied to be in a cohort of "grassroots" leaders for our organization with the express purpose of filling this gap.  Largely the brainchild of a staff person devoted expressly to "community engagement" which really means "black/brown community engagement," we began a cohort of interested residents who opted in to participate in our organization this way.   This group of about 20 well-intentioned black and brown (but mostly black) residents has a lot of promise.  Some members took the idea and ran with it, now about 12 months later considering civic and community leadership positions they never really considered before.  Others have needed more of a case-management or peer-network experience as they navigate bigger issues of their own housing and food insecurity, unemployment, and homelessness. 

Practically speaking, it's been a good learning experience but we've found a lot of need as the motivation for participation; many members have used this as a way to get resources for themselves.  And good for them.  But, as is typical, we haven't moved to the sphere of influence just yet.

Community Engagement Approach 2: Listen to Them

One of the most enduring ways systemic inequity is perpetuated is promising to listen to the people and then doing the opposite.  The simple answer to reversing this habit is to just stop doing that but institutional leaders seem to struggle with this.  In the best circumstances, it's because institutions, especially bureaucratic ones like school districts or city governments, don't have infrastructure built to accommodate or value this.  There are no "mechanisms" built in to move community voice from feedback to actionable suggestions, let alone community truth or expertise.  

We have tried to center the dialogue and ideas of our grassroots leaders in our program in a couple ways.  First, we reiterate our commitment to it over and over AND we acknowledge we are trying to change a deeply engrained habit.  This sounds like lip service; it is not.  What this practically does is communicate to them that we a trying, that we might sometimes get it wrong, and if we do we hope they'll show us the right way.  Second, and related to the first, we have intentionally built a space for them that is theirs, that is safe for them to talk with each other, and to give us back ideas about our larger strategies on their own terms.  Together, these approaches center them as community experts and us as servant leaders and learners who are trying to work together with them to build the mechanisms that will begin to automatically, consistently seek their wisdom, ideas, and opinions just as old systems did to privilege other groups at other times.

Community Engagement Approach 3: Give Them Resources

While holding on to "listen to them" in our right hand, let's add to the equation "give them money and support to enact their own ideas" in the left hand.  When we brought these two together, powerful, powerful things started happening.  When we started giving these grassroots leaders a pot of grant money to give to initiatives they thought should receive support in the community, more and more women of color came forward with ideas for organizations and programs they'd wanted to start but had no means with which to do that.  Ideas started becoming real solutions that resonated for people within their specific neighborhoods and communities. Goodwill was built.  Increased participation started happening.

Similarly, when a local radio station and some Youtube editing and uploading know-how met with their idea to produce a live interview chat-show, meant to discuss issues relevant to them and their families, the response was overwhelmingly positive.  This show, streamed live on Facebook and local radio and then posted on Youtube for later viewing, has become a community staple for producing some of the most honest conversations from community leaders (school superintendents, the city Mayor, organizational leaders, community leaders) being interviewed and asked questions that the "regular" people have that never get addressed or answered otherwise.

It's part of understanding whiteness and privilege to understand that equity in ideas often means just handing over the reins to others who have their own good ideas and know-how.  It's a crucial, critical lesson. 

Community Engagement Approach 4: Give Them Recognition

Last but possibly the simplest to effect in building community leaders from the ground up: giving the recognition they deserve, when they deserve it, plentifully.  Just like all of us, we want a little recognition for the grit we've proven, through adversity whatever it is.  In the case of our grassroots leaders, they additionally may face adverse experiences in sinking traditional leadership--earlier rejection, feelings of unworthiness, or more importantly sometimes decades of just not being heard or acknowledged.  Giving recognition is an instrumental part of the process and isn't an end goal.  In order to come into their own as leaders, to feel ready and capable, they have to rest on a firm foundation of recognition for everything they've overcome which often includes systemic racism and discrimination.

This looks different for each person but one of the best-received forms of recognition we have instituted is the monthly "Spotlight" with each person getting one, answering the same questions, getting their picture on a special website page, and getting the spotlight promoted in the newsletter.  Again and again, we've heard back from them that it's an opportunity to "tell their story."  Participation in this is beyond enthusiastic and renews a sense of commitment and engagement to grow their own individual role in the community.

Final Thoughts

Especially in our organization in which the idea of racial equity has been batted around as "the most important priority" for years without much to prove we're putting our money where our mouths are, this summative approach to community engagement is regularly touted as "the best thing [our organization] has done.

I've often questioned whether or not this amounts to systems change, often arguing that it's a program, in the sense that each cohort of leaders we've had really only changes outcomes for 7-12 people at a time, some of whom don't go to take on other community leadership roles.  Over time, though, I have to consider the way the effects play out.  In 3 years, we have had 3 from this group, all black women, go on to run for and win School District Board Seats or elected seats on advisory committees at the City.  Their influence becomes exponential at that point and actively changes how the community envisions board members and elected officials going forward.  There's no denying that's systems-change.

I probably stand corrected.