BUILDING COMMUNITIES FROM THE INSIDE OUT (Post 2 of 5)
What I learned I didn’t know or acknowledge before...
- my day-to-day experience in a labeling environment is affecting how I regard people and approach problems
- the value of communities needing and utilizing everyone’s gifts
- the many gifts of citizens in a small community
- the source of John and his work
- it’s easy to focus on gifts of others rather than focus on deficits
- the work of connecting is one person at a time
- limits of thinking as a server verses a connector
- key to effective connectors
- very helpful to carry the image of half empty/half full as deficit/asset descriptions
- resistance can occur even within organizations designed to help others
- the idea of giving gifts and helping people see what gifts they have to offer – even when others may not see them as valuable
- a different perspective, way to gain insight
- the various stereotypes (phrases) that we make without even knowing it – like “homeless”
- 2 new thoughts connecting people were important – I’ve known but felt wrong to say that groups honor problems.
- the importance of connectors for community building
- gifts of “effective connectors”
- how I could use in my job every day in the school setting
- the tremendous power of positive thinking
- how much the Puerto Rican community became involved with the disenfranchised in their neighborhood
- what asset based community building is
- how open some of the communities were
- the devastating effects of labeling
- it begins in neighborhood; doesn’t have to be on some grand scale
- as John said, so many of these things we probably already knew but he “reminded” us of them and challenged us to apply & reflect upon them so beautifully and effectively
the devastating impact of labels - how important we are to each other
- programs are easy to manage, fund, and control, but individualized connections take effort from the community and need to be micro-managed
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