COMMUNITIES IN ACTION

Communities can best solve complex problems and create futures of equity and justice when they:

• Meaningfully involve all stakeholders in the privileged work of building community;
• Build relationships of trust and respect across lines of race, class, power differences;
• Seek to build on all of their assets—physical, organizational, cultural or historic, human (particularly across a continuum of ages); and
• Embrace the paradox—responsibility, knowledge, and wisdom reside within communities and often people outside of the community can provide a helpful catalyst for unleashing latent potential.

Outsiders can best help communities effectively solve complex problems and create futures of equity and justice when they:

• Make explicit commitment to expand the community’s capacities to solve its own problems and create its own future rather than provide answers;
• Engage with the community in a spirit of partnership and learning for all parties;
• Ensure that an institutional base and systems for ongoing learning remain to
  support collaborative change over time; and
• Recognize that an outside provider may be useful to the community in the future, but avoid creating dependency.

Processes that assist communities to solve complex problems and create futures of equity and justice are most effective when they:

• Combine planning, action, and reflection so that concrete change occurs as a result of any deliberative “problem-solving” process;
• Account for the cultural and historic context of the community, drawing on both the related strengths and the barriers;
• Integrate leadership development into all phases of the work in the community; and
• Provide enough time—often years—for true and lasting change.