Introduce Rhonda.This is a longer deck, but I’m only going to touch on the relevant pieces for you. The whole deck is available from the conference.
10 secondsCopyrighted because this is material developed for the Indigenous Community Development course for FNIHB employees.
1 minuteWe know that communities function well together, when individuals have skills, when organizations have the competencies to fulfill their mandates. But we also know that communities do well with the support of others, such as governments and innovative partners like corporations, non-profits. Based on my experience, these partnerships need partners who understand each other, and uphold the value of communities making decisions for themselves. Community development happens within community – external partners cannot “do” community development to a community. So we are undertaking an extensive training approach within FNIHB to build the competencies of our employees, so that they define their roles as supporters and facilitators of what happens in community. We all share the vision of strong vibrant healthy community.
1minuteHere are two different ways to consider what healthy community could look like. Each community defines this for themselves, but here’s some options. The first written by Marcia Krawll a number of years ago, talks a lot about social connections, social networks, and individuals supporting each other. The second comes from our Maori friends in New Zealand. If it were adapted to our world, this is what it would look like: healthy individuals, contributing to community, knowing their own culture, working together. The reason why we always start with the vision, is that it reminds us that we actually are working on something together. So let’s define it – community development.
1 minuteThis is the Framework in one image. See the three pillars on the outside, the principles in red in the inside, all founded on cultural competence. This will be available in the future in a text format.
First, the pillars: Community Capacity, Government Partners…., and Partnerships for Well-being. These are entry points into doing the work of community development. How do communities continue to build their own capacity, so that self-determination and excellence in service delivery is achieved? But the way we do the work, is almost more important than the work itself. Process is product?
Then, the principles. Many of these will be familiar to you. Let me focus on just a few of them, as you know what many of them are already. I’m going to focus on Indigenous Knowledge and Culture, and Leadership in Community. These are only 2 of the five principles, the rest you can review on your own. I’ll also talk about how we describe Cultural Competence.But first, what’s the point again of community development?
3 minutesThe point is to build capacities in communities, so that you can build on your own assets and address your own issues. Capacities are those in individuals, in organizations too. We describe capacities in the widest possible way, whatever is needed for individuals to be ready-to-learn, ready-to-work. And capacities for organizations too, whatever your health centre needs to be excellent at fulfilling its mandate. The key message here for us as external partners and supporters of the work that you do in community, is “first do no harm”. We should not be compromising community capacities, decision-making and planning. Every interaction with community should build its strengths, build towards a hopeful future. [Rhonda, can you insert a story of your own, on how to do that?]
10 secondsI’m going to skip these slides too, because I want to talk about leadership.
Finally, cultural competence. The Community Development Framework is based in cultural competence. Because it’s an expectation that FNIHB should be culturally competent, and because all the evidence says that culturally competent approaches are the ones that are going to be most sustainable. Lifelong learning….let me just touch on this a bit. Cultural competence as we see it, it’s not a checkbox approach, it’s not a one-time course. It is a lifelong journey, as we all have experiences to learn more about other cultures, to learn how to build more effective relationships across cultures.