COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
UNDERSTANDING UBW'S TERMINOLOGY
Asset Mapping
Asset mapping is a process of assessing what resources, skills and strengths are available in the group and/or community. UBW's philosophy is that often communities are addressed by what they lack and not by what they offer.
Community Engagement
Community engagement work is about creating an environment of exchange where mutual learning occurs that makes makes community-identified change possible. For UBW, this requires extensive planning and conversation with community representatives to define mutually-articulated goals, document and evaluate the process and agree on next step planning. The primary focus of UBW's facilitation is collaborative learning that celebrates and/or addresses issues of interest and/or concern to the host community.
Community Engagement
Community engagement work is about creating an environment of exchange where mutual learning occurs that makes makes community-identified change possible. For UBW, this requires extensive planning and conversation with community representatives to define mutually-articulated goals, document and evaluate the process and agree on next step planning. The primary focus of UBW's facilitation is collaborative learning that celebrates and/or addresses issues of interest and/or concern to the host community.
Dialogic Learning
Sharing ideas, information, experiences and assumptions for the purposes of the personal and collective learning. Dialogue is not a decision-making tool, but rather a learning process that will inform decision-making and expand thinking.Embodied Learning
Using movement to physically process concepts.
Entering, Building and Exiting Community
Entering, building and exiting community is a UBW concept that has been in development since 1992, when the Company finished a three-month community engagement project in New Orleans. After meeting with some New Orleans partners and visiting some key sites for debriefing and evaluation, Ron Chisom from People's Institute for Survival and Beyond remarked that the most effective part of what we did was how we knew to enter the community. We did not come in with an assumption of participation and a project theme or goal. Instead we asked what people wanted to see addressed; how could we plan together; how could each partner be strengthened at the close of the work. Since that time, we have been building on the concept and developing it into a workshop that is one of our central organizing principles for our work.
Outreach
Outreach identifies a method of interacting with a community where there is an assumption of a powerful and knowledgeable center, organization or institution that "reaches out" to an assumed less powerful and knowledgeable community. This establishes a hierarchical relationship with the assumed power center giving information to and directing those who are receivers of the information, the less powerful. In many cases, outreach merely focuses on how many are served and developing audiences to fill seats in a theater. UBW supports community engagement and not outreach.
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