In the past 20 years (gulp…), my practice has been molded around supporting organizations to reach their full potential by being clearer on vision, mission, strategy and articulating results. In the past eight years, my practice has evolved to focus on strategy and learning and evaluation. It’s always about supporting leaders (that’s everyone) working in stronger alignment with purpose and each other.
Strategy and direction-setting
Reflections, learning and evaluation
In practical terms, we need to be able to tell our own stories, from our own perspectives, with our own words, in our own context and not having someone from the ivory tower “studying”us, making meaning for us, and/or extracting it from us. We are completely capable of defining success and creating meaningful indicators that tell us we are moving in the right direction. We owe that to ourselves, our communities and the greater work of justice.
The ways in which we add value to all of our projects are:
1. The combination of our competencies, values, and practices to support social and racial justice organizations and leaders to engage, reflect, be courageous to learn and grow;
2. Our social, political, spiritual networks with leaders, capacity builders and funders;
4. Our track record, skills and co-ownership approach; and
5. Our movement credentials and personal backgrounds.
We use many visuals in our work as a way to engage beyond talking. Above is a visual map from A Long Walk Home's Theory of Change retreat (artist: Greg Morozumi), and below is a visioning board for City Heights and the San Diego region via Building Healthy Communities, Feb. 2020 (artist: Kate Morales asthecrowfliesdesign.com).
