Helping Indigenous communities harness their strengths and talents, and then witnessing them use these to work out local solutions that keep improving their community’s well-being is our main mission at Indigenous Worx.
Between all the different types of strategies, coaching, training and operations support we provide, comprehensive community plans are among the most challenging, but the most rewarding.
These plans are always wide-reaching, and take planners deep into the community. More active ancestral governance, food sovereignty and security, accessible and adequate housing, shifts to cleaner energy, data sovereignty, greater healthcare and family services, better Elder care, and fostering the local indigenous economy are just a few of the diverse focus areas that CCPs have to address.
The Nuxalk Nation recently completed one of its largest and most comprehensive community-led planning initiatives in over a decade. Their plan sets a foundation for developing a resilient community that thrives and grows.
Working with Indigenous Worx, Nuxalk Nation leadership was invested in making sure that the community would be heavily engaged, while innovative research methods drew out important evidence to support the community’s direction.
We’re always inspired by those in the community who give their time, wisdom and knowledge to help. Our own lives are always richer for the experience. To honour those gifts, we wanted to pass on what we’ve learned in hopes that other communities might benefit.
First, this article will be talking about why the project needs to be community powered from start to finish, and why it’s so important to make sure community members feel safe and comfortable to share. Then, we cover community identity, raising-up strengths and proper engagement, and why these are musts if you’re looking for stronger local solutions and ideas. And finally, we offer a couple tips that help communities go the distance and make sure the work gets done.
Let’s start with what a CCP is.
A Comprehensive Community Plan, CCP for short, determines a community's social and economic priorities, needed actions, and the resources that would be needed to implement them. The planning process is always participatory so that communities can initiate and generate their own multiple bottom-line solutions.
The aim is always to build on local resources and capacities, increase community control and ownership, enhance the health of the environment, and encourage community resilience.
Beyond existing as a simple action plan, CCPs set the table for stronger community relationships; improved trust between members and governing councils; increased capacity to work together and get things done; and reinforced understanding of community values and priorities.
Now, on to those key learnings.
Recharge on Community Powered Governance
Unlike administrative projects, CCPs are community led so it’s important to make sure your first step is to look to members to form a project steering or governance committee. While not intended to be a permanent body, this group exists to make decisions about the overall direction of the project and to provide important context about the community.
This governance group needs to invite a variety of opinions and views into the room, so it’s important to have different ages, gender balance, and governing families represented. We spend important time working with clients to develop terms of reference (TOR) that spell out why it’s important that the project is community led, why the governance committee exists, who should be on it, what their responsibilities are (and aren’t), time commitments, cultural values that should guide personal conduct, and honorariums. We don’t worry about making it perfect knowing that the committee should have a chance to review it at their first meeting and to make any needed changes to suit.
Take proper time to include those most interested and committed. Post notice through all community and band administration channels. Enlisting the help of community influencers to spread the word, approaching key Elders and knowledge keepers individually, and posters in the windows of high-traffic community areas and on message boards will do a better job getting the word out than a group email or Website notice.
Once members are secured, work closely with the Chair to craft agendas that leave breathing room for discussion and avoid making attendees feel like they’re just there to rubber stamp someone else’s decisions. Members want to know that they are valued and leading important change.
Meeting protocols are important. At the first meeting, let the steering committee define their own expected behaviours, preferences, and needs. This includes moving through agenda items in a timely manner while still giving members the opportunity to feel heard. Nobody wants to be the one to interrupt.
Meeting Tips
Agendas with fewer discussion points and project updates that stick to 3-4 important bullets (even better if these are circulated in advance as part of the meeting materials) will go a long way towards minimizing the chance that you’re interrupting or cutting anyone off.
We’ll often record video presentations of important updates and circulate these in advance of meetings. Steering committee members will often watch these at home with their morning coffee, so when the meeting time comes, members are briefed and jump straight into forward looking discussions.
Honorariums are a must. Community members who offer their knowledge, wisdom and guidance should receive payment not as a transaction, but out of acknowledgement and respect for the gifts and counsel they share.
Create Cultural Safety
Outreach needs to respect local rhythms and culture. With generational trauma ever-present and social inequalities persisting, outside consultants must be aware that it is extremely important that workshops, discussion groups, and even presentations at Elder's luncheons or youth groups, offer a culturally safe space for sharing.
There are some great Indigenous consultants who provide training on cultural safety.
For companies or organizations already doing outreach work for planning, be sure to consult your clients or if they’re unsure, a local knowledge keeper in order to ensure that proper protocols are observed as they vary nation to nation. Always consult the project steering committee about ancestral governance practices and how these should shape and inform the pace and format of your community engagement plans.
Sparking open dialogue begins with allowing participants to bring their whole selves into the room. Be sure to allow ample time upfront for proper introductions. Some members will use the time to speak about their family ties, personal journey, and connection to the land. Important context regardless of the topic that has brought everyone together that day, so take it as a gift, and do not rush through it.
The first initial rounds of sharing can sometimes be emotionally charged. Hold space for community members to share their stories. As a facilitator, stand witness to their testimony and lean-in, but avoid taking it on or matching their emotions to show you care. This is their journey. It’s our responsibility as facilitators to demonstrate active listening at all times.
Early breaks are important and allow the room to reset and participants to emotionally recharge and settle into the space. Feeling heard and seen, participants will be more ready to share on specific topics that they feel strongly and passionately about.
Community and cultural values will always be the most important lens. Before getting specific, participants should always be provided the opportunity to discuss their fundamental beliefs and world views that they feel should guide the day, process, focus, priorities or solutions.
Let Community Identity Shine
Regardless of where you are in the world, societies operate in places of culture, people and environment. How we view ourselves, others and the relationships between the two matter.
A community’s identity will invariably set the limits for what is possible. It determines everything from having confidence in the face of opportunity, or setting the bar for success too low as opposed to high. Who a community imagines itself to be can determine the lines that are drawn and the alliances made.
If facilitators have created a safe place for sharing, then dynamic exercises are free and clear to have community meeting and workshop attendees ask themselves deeper questions like who are they really? What are the values that should shape community decisions? What’s special about their community that they don’t want to lose? Or, what do they do well? The answers will be telling and directional.
Focus on Strengths, Not Just Problems
Success, innovation, and conflict are always shaped by local forces. A winning attitude requires a positive view of the assets in your own backyard, and a true willingness to use these like never before. Always play to your strengths. Don’t get lost in debating weaknesses or fall into the same political traps that do nothing but protect the status quo and leave the community frustrated, depleted and worse off.
Indigenous peoples believe that everything is connected, so taking a systems approach helps better explore local strengths and whether or not they’re being put to good use. Nature, culture, human beings, society, financial freedoms, the ability to influence and exert power, and even supporting infrastructure all interact and determine the outcome.
A Community Capitals Framework Analysis (CCF) is the gold standard for helping communities play to their strengths. Because of its full circle take, CCF has become one of the main lenses for community analysis and development around the world. Looking at seven specific dimensions and their interactions, CCF looks at a community’s assets (not needs or problems) and whether they are being put to good use. Some assets can be invested to generate more assets. Neglected assets depreciate and in the process, cause harm to the community unless something is done about it.
We like this model because it creates more hopeful and inspired conversations about what is possible. It’s a welcome change of pace from the overshadowing discussions about limits and challenges that only seem to cloud the way forward.
Using mobile technology platforms, we like to ask workshop attendees to take a couple minutes to list the assets and strengths that are most important to them. We’re able to show their answers in real time, right on the main screen which always sparks interesting discussions. Afterwards, we always save time to ask how all these different strengths might interact or be tied together and leveraged as solutions.
Insist on Community Engagement that’s Actually...Engaging
Sure, online surveys and phone interviews are important, but when it comes to reading between the lines and digging deeper into how people actually feel about the real issues, nothing beats face-to-face contact. The more dynamic and engaging your in-person workshops and focus groups are, the richer and more useful the feedback will be.
Mindfulness exercises are great for grounding attendees at the beginning of meetings and to reinforce holistic approaches and ways of being. For example, we like breathing and meditation exercises to help workshop attendees close their eyes and imagine how they want their community to look, feel, sound and even taste like in the future. The answers are far more concrete and revealing than any wordsmithing exercise designed to craft a community vision that’s vague and watered down to generate broad support.
Dynamic exercises that get community members moving around and talking to each other will uncover important insights. We prefer a room setup and exercises that are in the round to physically reinforce connectivity and inclusivity. Our Tree Ring exercise gets everyone interacting and talking to different people about important social and ecological issues. Whatever the format, just be sure to gently pace them, and provide seating for Elders and those with mobility issues so they can still actively participate and feel part of things.
Technology has its place and uses, but don’t let it become a barrier or source of anxiety for participants. We’ve had tremendous success with Facebook groups, online surveys and mobile engagement platforms, but sometimes walking Elders through printed surveys and coding their responses later ensures they feel respected and heard.
Youth engagement needs to be fun (or at least interesting) with questions and exercises that are relevant to their daily lives. We’ll often enlist the support of local youth leaders to help lead younger audiences through games and exercises designed to get them thinking about what matters most to them and their immediate social circles. Pizza and snacks also help get the job done.
The Drumbeat of Implementation
A great plan is nothing without the courage, willpower and grit to get things done, which is why CCPs always require a strong and clear implementation or action plan. Seeing the right actions to take, breaking the work down into manageable steps, and sharing responsibility with the community for getting the work done will make the difference between success and seeing your plan collect dust on a shelf.
By now, your community plan should have a vision that you’ve taken the time to translate into goals, measures and strategies. If you’ve done this part right, then most of the actions that you need to implement will reveal themselves pretty quickly. If they don’t, it’s probably a sign that you need to take a couple steps back and revisit the main house posts of your strategic framework. To avoid this from happening, we always do a workshop with band administrators just to make sure everyone is on the same page with what strategy is…..and isn’t.
Turning your goals into relevant and reliable measures is where plans most often start to get off track. We cover some great and easy methods for doing this. To take a simple example, if your vision is a community that actively participates in decision making, then one of your goals might be to increase the number of members who show up at annual gatherings. Your measure would be the attendee count. Your strategy to increase annual attendance then becomes your focus, and you’ll be expected to wisely use money, people and time to achieve it. From here, the actions you chose to implement must increase annual attendance, so you might decide to post regular notices on your community Website, place posters in coffee shop windows or stick flyers in everyone’s door. Any of these actions will fit the focus, drive the measured result you want to achieve, and ultimately help you hit your goal.
Whatever actions you do measure, be consistent in your efforts year-after-year, making improvements as you go, and before long, you’ll see the benefits. In our example above, that would be a community that’s more actively engaged in decision making.
When it comes to building your action plan, making it manageable is more important than making it comprehensive, we feel. Plans are nothing without people willing and able to do the work. There’s three ways to ensure your plan is people-powered:
recognize the good work that’s already being done and pull that into the plan;
break the bigger pieces of the implementation work down into annual milestones; and
share power, roles and responsibilities.
Let’s start with acknowledging and respecting the work that’s already in progress. Indigenous administrations hire heavily from within their communities. These trained and accredited professionals work tirelessly to make the community better and healthier. As part of any CCP we work on, we’ll spend focused time with band administrators knowing they have the pulse of the community and are already working on important solutions to local challenges. CCPs should absolutely incorporate and feature these plans as well as support any needed resources, unfunded priorities and future projects. We also make sure CCPs pay close attention to the health of band administrations overall whether that’s supporting stronger governance or leadership, human resource support, communications, or financial management.
We’re only leaders if people are able to follow. Pulling a canoe across great distances or climbing tall mountains is daunting for anyone. Breaking the work down into small steps or strokes keeps us moving ahead and feeling that we've got this.
When it comes to large capital projects, building new infrastructure, hiring six new nurses, expanding a local health clinic, getting more youth in trades, or establishing more Eldercare options on reserve, think about the logical first steps and resources you’ll need, and then set manageable goals for what you hope to accomplish by the end of each year, every six months or even every quarter. Be specific but above all, make it realistic. It needs to be something that teams will actually do and can accomplish while keeping a strong work-life balance. Protect yourself and your teams from burnout and focus first on maintaining a healthy work environment.
Finally, the most implemented CCPs make sure people are empowered. Band administrations shouldn’t have to or be expected to lead in every situation or solve every problem. Conversely, nobody should be sitting back and letting others do the work. Enlisting the full spectrum of administrative, professional and community talents will foster the institutions, associations and informal networks best able to deliver the outcomes you want, and help your community meet the challenges and opportunities of the day.
Comprehensive Community Plans are big and broad by nature. It’s a huge undertaking to get the community behind a common vision for their wellbeing, and then agree on all the work that needs to be done. But with the right governance, approach, and determination to get things done, CCPs can lift a community's gaze up to focus on a horizon where anything is possible.
Looking to launch a CCP process in your own community? Get in touch. Indigenous Worx is committed to not only helping communities develop stronger plans, we show Indigenous administrations how to implement, manage and update community plans on their own.
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