Perspectives: Community Cafés: Leadership That Grows Relationships and Strengthens Families
Growing an inclusive community requires meaningful, ongoing community conversations that welcome diverse perspectives. These conversations have clear intention, spotlight strengths and weave participants’ gifts and talents into the work. Community Cafés are doing just that all over the country. But what makes Community Cafés different from typical meetings?
The Community Café approach is flexible and used in workplaces, organizations, places of worship, child and family centers, parks or community spaces or almost any setting. Conversations are intended to spark leadership to build the relationships needed to strengthen communities and families. These conversations can impact policy, organizational practices and group and individual action. Community residents host conversations related to the essential protective factors needed for optimal child development such as leadership and community partnerships. Appreciative Inquiry, a World Café principle, creates conversations around a protective factor framework strengthening the spirit, heart and mind of Community Café’s work.
When a series of conversations are hosted in the spirit of Appreciative Inquiry, community meetings get away from the typical process of asking how to solve problems and instead begin to assess what is already working well. Conversation hosts have an opportunity to arrive curious and host a space for learning rather than promoting a preset agenda. Strengthening communities and families is an ongoing process of dreaming, designing, discovering and delivering action based on group wisdom. For example, rather than trying to come up with solutions to prejudice, communities invite diverse perspectives into the room to discuss questions like, “How do I know I belong?”
Community Café hosts frequently use techniques from The World Café model and always keeps in mind principles for hosting. The World Café organization has published seven principles for hosting that really speak to the heart of inclusive community conversation. Some include ideas such as: provide context; explore questions that matter; create hospitable space; and encourage everyone’s contributions. These principles in action may look, feel, smell, taste and sound differently in different neighborhoods but hosts will have thought of how these principles relate to the people coming.
People value their time and keep coming when their efforts result in immediate benefits for themselves, such as making new friends and learning about community resources. People also become inspired to continue to participate when they see their efforts are building a better community for the next generation. The Strengthening Families Protective Factor Framework developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy has done just that. This framework facilitates mindfulness on promoting what works and strengthening families rather than trying to prevent negative behavior or fix what is broken. The five protective factors relate to every human: hope, parenting, health, community and compassion.
The final word about Community Cafés is that they are always hosting in partnership. It is in the growing of loving human relationships that communities and families are strengthened.
ROBIN HIGA is the author and principal developer of the Community Café approach to strengthening families. Higa was a speaker at the 2015 Georgia Winter Institute.
For more information:
• Community Cafés www.thecommunitycafe.com, The World Café www.theworldcafe.com, Center for the Study of Social Policy www.cssp.org
Tags: Making a Difference