Breakthrough Community Change: A Guide to Creating Common Agendas That Change Everything

"Community engagement expert reveals how readers can identify their community's assets and rally people together to achieve collective impact and solve deep-rooted challenges. Many of us are upset by issues like racism, poverty, and climate change, but it takes collective effort to get to the root of these complex problems. Whole Community Change offers a proven methodology for uniting leaders from business, human service organizations, and government to work together with people who have a lived experience of the problem. Readers will learn how to create a community plan, measure impact, and engage everyone in the process. A comprehensive manual, the book also includes sections on topics such as raising money for big change and hosting community conversations. Author Paul Born is president of the Tamarack Institute, whose work has contributed to lower cancer rates in Maine, improved mental health for young people in Florida, and reduced poverty in Iowa and in the entire country of Canada, as described in a April 4, 2019 David Brooks column in the New York Times. This book will provide access to Born's coaching in an accessible and implementable format. People want change, and they want to live in safe and equitable communities. This book helps make thatpossible"--
Discover a powerful methodology for bringing communities together to uncover hidden assets and transform deep-rooted challenges.Veteran community organizer Paul Born’s work has contributed to lowering cancer rates in Maine, improving mental health for young people in Florida, and reducing poverty rates in Canada by 20 percent. In this much-needed new book, he shares stories of how he was able to catalyze local communities and guide them to make significant progress on seemingly intractable community problems.Born has found that the secret to success is to organize and unite around a common agenda. This is not a list of topics, like a meeting agenda, nor a strategic plan. He offers a process for bringing leaders from businesses, human service organizations, and governments together with people who have a lived experience of a specific community problem. A common agenda is a statement of shared aspirations, a map of the assets in the community, and a road map for how to work together to make those aspirations a reality.Part I of this book describes how to identify your community’s readiness for change; form leadership, action, and strategy teams; create a common agenda; and establish plans for community engagement. Part II presents the approaches and skill sets needed to do the work described in part I.Remarkably, enormous systemic problems such as climate change, poverty, disease, racism, housing, and many more issues can be best addressed at the local level. Communities can develop solutions tailored to their unique circumstances and can collaborate at a magnitude that can result in a truly transformative impact. This book shows how to make change happen.