Action for Healthy Communities

Community Capacities

We facilitate a variety of capacity building activities and processes in areas related to the cycle of community development. The process includes working with different sectors such as youth, women, seniors, parents, and families who have different cultural backgrounds, abilities/disabilities, knowledge and experiences, and preferences. The program includes, but is not limited to, the following components: Community Initiatives, Community Leadership and Community Building:

Community Initiatives

We support individuals to get connected, organized and ready to act upon specific self-identified issues. Participants in each Community Initiative (CI) learn by doing and by participating in other training and gathering opportunities offered by our organization. The process involved to start a CI is in Diagram 3.

Currently, we have two levels of support to CI. The first level involves helping individuals to get organized and create new community initiatives (CI). The support includes, among other things, ongoing on site training to plan, budget and recruit other participants as well as seed grants for a maximum of $1000 to start up a CI. To acquire the seed grant each group needs to follows an application process for which we also provide training and ongoing advice. A CI volunteer Team make the final approval of each seed grant following the AHC Community Development Criteria. In 2005-2006, we supported 25 Community Initiatives. Some of the new CI created constitute the practicum of the community training offered by our organization to improve leadership or community animation skills and knowledge of community volunteers.

The second level involves supporting ongoing Community Initiatives to sustain their work independently of AHC. Our support involves monthly leadership and community building training workshops, multicultural gatherings, ongoing referral services, monthly planning meetings, and coaching the process of becoming inclusive of all their community members, including people with different abilities, disabilities, health conditions and cultures. 10 Ongoing Community Initiatives were supported in 2005-2006.

Community Leadership

Community leadership trainings have been designed to enhance the leadership skills of community volunteers by providing in-class and practical learning opportunities that help them to take on actions more effectively.

We currently are planning to move from a first level of training: Basic Leadership workshops to a second level: Advance Leadership Training. The first level is to offer monthly basic leadership sessions for community volunteers running CI or interested in creating new ones. Thus, the training set aims to increase participants’ capacity to create or coordinate CIs. Each Year’s training schedules and content are decided collectively with participants during the first workshop. For the current fiscal year (Apr 2006-Mar 2007), the workshops will be held the third Wednesday and third Saturday of each month on topics such as follows:
· Finding common ground
· Leadership styles
· Time management skills/how to be flexible
· People out reach/communication
· Awareness on different cultures: based on age, gender, ability/disability, etc.
· Context analysis
· Networking/ partnerships
· Visioning polices & procedures/mandate
· Planning/organization skills
· Conflict management/resolution, troubleshooting/technical things
The second level is still under development. Feedback from participants in the first level and other programs shows the need to deeper community leaders’ knowledge and understanding of different community engagement approaches to facilitate community dialogues as a basic strategy to promote broader citizens participation in creating vibrant communities in Edmonton.

Community Building

Usually, the community building process for each group initiate with new CI (as explained above). However, there are already culturally-base groups with a variety of barriers to strengthen their communities. We support our CI participants and members of those groups to sustain their work by creating learning and sharing opportunities/activities. Information, knowledge and culture are learnt during those activities followed by creative actions that not only strengthen the capacity of each group individually but also the capacity of the collective. A number of groups from different cultures have already started thinking and working together as a larger community to create happiness and wellness among their members.

The process to support these groups involves Community Building Training focusing on working with new and nascent organizations represented in central Edmonton. The trainings are specifically designed to be responsive to the felt needs of these organization leaders and group members, and to address issues arising as a result of their needs assessment. Representatives of such groups have expressed interest in formal training in these areas, either because they lack skills or are having trouble transferring skills from other countries and cultures. Monthly (second Saturday of each month) training sessions are offered in the following areas:
· Fundraising
· Organization legal registration: incorporating a Society, charitable status
· Organizational structure: creating strategic plans, budgets and policies
· Organizational management: financial, human and other resources
· Board development: creating member roles, bylaws and policies
· Public engagement: media, promotion

Another community building strategy is the Multicultural Gatherings. These are bimonthly 5-hours events organized by a Multicultural Steering Committee and a wide range of community groups and supporters to provide opportunities for celebration of cultural heritage and multicultural encounters. Each event features a different culture and all people celebrate that culture. Supper is usually provided at these free opportunities to meet new people in a casual environment devoted to increasing our mutual understanding.

From 2004 to 2006, we have held 13 multicultural gatherings:
3 Latin American
2 African
3 Chinese-Vietnamese
2 Aboriginal
1 People with Developmental Disabilities
3 Corn Festivals

Feedback from participants has led our organization to design Community Dialogues as a new strategy to engage citizens in building healthier and stronger communities within geographical neighbourhoods. This strategy is still under development.
If you are interested in participating or volunteering in any of these training Activities, please call 944 4687 or e-mail action4@shawbiz.ca.