Catalyzing Community Change with Mark Cabaj and Liz Weaver
ICFW Podcast - Overloaded: Understanding Neglect – Season 2
Show Notes: Catalyzing Community Change - Episode 2 - with Liz Weaver and Mark Cabaj
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
- Liz Weaver – Co-CEO, Tamarack Institute
- Mark Cabaj – Founder and President, Here to There
:00-:08 – Mark Cabaj – “Programmatic interventions help people beat the odds. Systemic interventions change their odds.”
:09-5:17 – Luke Waldo – Introduction to Collective Impact and Field Catalyst
- Winning the War on Poverty
- Vibrant Communities Ending Poverty
5:18-6:27 – Liz Weaver – Community is at the center of everything in my career.
6:28-8:02 – Mark Cabaj – “Programmatic interventions help people beat the odds. Systemic interventions change their odds.”
8:03-8:53 – Luke – What role does Tamarack play in an initiative like Vibrant Communities Ending Poverty?
8:54-12:49 – Liz – Collective Impact: Context matters. Relationships and ambition within communities to make changes to complex problems like poverty matter. Developed a learning community within 12 communities. Process of reflection to develop a poverty matrix to understand the depth and experience of those living in poverty in a learning community.
12:50-13:43 - Luke – Taking lessons learned and frameworks from previous efforts like Vibrant Communities Ending Poverty to drive new efforts to address complex issues like climate change. What role does Here to There play in community change efforts?
13:44-17:57 – Mark – Why is clear, but how is not. Scaling. How do we take all this complexity and put it into a 10-year plan?
“Plan the work, then work the plan.” Learning by doing. Align distinct actors.
Michael Quinn Patton: “Traditional evaluation can be the enemy of social innovation and change.” Introduced us to Developmental Evaluation, real-time feedback to affirm your direction or change it.
17:58-19:06 - Luke – Putting a pin in the Developmental Evaluation conversation to revisit the challenge of meeting the urgency of the moment while also being able to take the time to evaluate what is working and what is not.
19:07-20:53 - Luke – How do we translate Collective Impact 2.0 and Lived Experience into more approachable language?
20:54-28:56 - Liz – How do we engage the people that are closest to the problems, and authentically hear the barriers and systems they have to navigate? In the Hamilton roundtable, they learned that for anyone receiving financial benefits, there were “982 rules that regulated your life.” “That’s a lot of rules to get a little money.”
Communities Building Youth Futures – Youth-led movement still requires strong allies who ask themselves how they are part of the problem and how they can be part of the solution. No blame, all accountable standard. Lived Experience Equity - 50% table of Lived Experience, 50% allies.
28:57-30:24 Luke – To address the power imbalance, we must aspire to power balance. Story about not building capacity for Lived Experience partner, giving them the language to effectively participate in the process. Balance is not achieved solely by having the same number of people at the table.
30:25-31:26 - Liz – Build Lived Experience capacity, compensate them, and create opportunities to build relationships outside of the project itself. How might we change?
31:27-31:32 – Luke – Anything to add, Mark?
31:33-34:38 - Mark – Collective Impact. It’s often a How problem.
1. Those most affected, know the most about it.
2. Ownership to create allies.
3. Nothing about us, without us.
Saul Alinsky. Human-Centered Design.
34:39-35:20 – Luke – Human-Centered Design led us to the Tamarack Community Change Festival. The ICFW initially learned from IDEO, George Aye, and the Greater Good Studio.
35:21-37:44 - Mark – Why is it important to be participatory in an authentic way to address issues of power? Participatory evaluation. Ripple effect mapping. “Practices have to be developed to meet the unique context” of our communities.
37:45-38:03 – Luke – Does “Nothing about us, without us” sound as good in Polish?
38:04-38:43 - Mark and Luke – Back and forth on the Polish translation.
38:44-40:06 - Luke – How do you define Critical Pathways, and why are they important in community change efforts?
40:07-43:45 – Liz – Critical Pathways. Access to affordable transportation in Calgary, which led to the provision of public transportation passes to low-income individuals. Each community picks the Critical Pathways that are most relevant and pressing for their community. For example, one community might prioritize affordable transportation while another focuses on affordable housing.
43:46-48:14 – Mark - What are we trying to achieve, and how can we make it explicit? What does winning mean? What is our pathway in getting there?
Pathway to employment case study, which utilized the iterative process of human-centered design. Solving one systemic problem can reveal new problems.
48:15-51:31 - Mark – Solving one systemic problem can reveal new problems. Zoom in, zoom out.
- Cities Reducing Poverty - Homeless day laborer pathway (Page 65)
51:32-53:06 - Luke – What is a field catalyst?
53:07-53:53 – Liz – Introduces Mark’s work behind the idea of field catalysts and Tamarack 2030 plan.
53:54-56:12 - Mark – Field catalyst serves as an intermediary to move a field along from front-line work to collective impact efforts, from public awareness, to practice building, and advocacy.
56:13-59:27 - Liz - Field catalyst. How do you support the work evolution that is happening on the ground while also bringing that work up into the system?
How do you bring awareness to the system what is working and not working on the ground? This is how my work connects to the systems-level work. Making sense of the patterns to increase and accelerate impact.
59:28-1:01-48 – Luke – Reaction to Mark and Liz’s field catalyst comments. What are the challenges to community change?
1:01:49-1:05:36 - Mark – When working on systems change, the best we can hope for is maybe. Most systems' challenges are uncertain, complex problems like raising a kid. Normalize challenges and failures. Challenges or failures might be rooted in scope by trying to accomplish too much without the capacity, and/or lack of buy-in from communities as leadership comes from the outside and lacks trust.
“It’s a vocation, community change, not a recipe.”
1:05:37-1:08:53 – Liz – If we aren’t stopping to learn after each failure or success, we are missing out on an opportunity for future improvement.
1:08:54-1:09:35 – Luke – What are the key strategies or core principles of community change?
1:09:36-1:11:25 - Liz – Adapt a set of principles and tools to your context. Readiness. How deep you dive into the complexity of the challenge. Approach. Co-design.
1:11:26-1:13:42 - Mark – Self-care. We are in a systems transition, so we need to take care of ourselves, do the best we can, and hand off the baton to those who come after us.
1:13:43-1:16:37 – Luke – Closing thoughts and 3 Key Takeaways
1:16:38-1:17:34 – Gratitude and closing credits.
Join the conversation and connect with us!
- Visit our podcast page on our ICFW website to learn more about the experts you hear in this series.
- Subscribe, rate our show and leave feedback in the comments section.
- Sign up for our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and our quarterly newsletter.
- Follow the Institute for Child and Family Well-being on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
You Might Like
