Would you like to join in for Community Action Day?

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Stimulating a movement fuelled by local responses

Community Life Competence is expanding. Communities in a wide range of contexts and locations rely on their strengths and take progress on issues of their concern in their own hands. Can we as Constellation members, facilitators and coaches all over the world make large scale progress and involve even more communities, including our own in this movement fuelled by local responses? To do so we propose to organize a Community Action Day.

We often see especially in the cities that people want to re-connect with their community members. This would be a good opportunity to do so. Boris from the Netherlands suggested that he could host such an interaction over a barbeque!

What would the day look like?
On the Community action day communities meet to do their self-assessment and thereafter, make action plans based on the self-assessment. The day will be an occasion where people share, listen, appreciate and support each other. It will also stimulate people to reflect and respond to their concerns.

Sharing with friends around the world
Communities could then share their self-assessment and action plan online with thousands of other communities. Being part of a global movement of change can stimulate them to take action and to connect for learning and sharing.

Partners
We would start from within, with Constellation members and partners in our own network. We could offer to collaborate with UNAIDS on World AIDS Day and RBM on Roll Back Malaria day. We could test it within the Constellation this year and explore it with potential partners in 2011.

We need your help
Do you have any ideas for the day, or would you like to join the working team to plan and coordinate the event all over the world? Please write to me at [e-mail] . I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,

Rituu

[Marion]

Dear Rituu,

I would love to join the working group, to shape the event, and I also can facilitate CAD in my community, and for sure, share some ideas. I can speak english, french and spanish so I can help to link the 4 continents ;)

We plan to facilitate the Blended Learning with students from the Chiang Mai University. I am still waiting for some answers, about some contacts I can get, to get in touch with them, thanks to the support from Gaston, Usa, Laurence, Lek and Lawan. I can also join some communities we already work with, in order to facilitate the CAD, with Lawan. But I think it would be very interesting to involve the Chiang Mai students in the event, as a new community group.

Next week, we have a full process with some communities here in Chiang Mai, on the INHAT's area of work. There are religious communities and also street children, which is a new community for us. I will share about the CAD with Lawan, to know with which communities we could facilitate the CAD.

I keep you informed :)

Take good care my dear Rituu !

Marion =)

[John Piermont Montilla]

Very interesting and engaging plan Rituu, and i believe this is a need for us constellation members, affiliates, and supporters to connect our ideas in an interactive manner. My question is: Is the day once a year? is the day uniform to all or each community? Would each create a day for their own and the constellation will organize a universal day for community action?

One of my ideas is to create an annual operational template for community action that includes quarterly self assessments and learning facilitation in between the quarters and an annual community day. You can decide for a Universal Day for Community Action so that each actions of the communities can be consolidated in this day.

Maybe in every Ten Practice in or SA will have their own day. One day for acknowledgement and recognition and etc. or assign one Practice for each month and the remaining 2 months is for the Universal Day of Community action (11th month) that incorporates all Practices (all stars forms a constellation) and the 12th month is for celebration (when all stars shines). I think this will be linked to the knowledge assets so that the ning tab on knowledge assets can be activated as an interactive space among us.

Johnpierre

[Kristin Bodiford]

Hi Rituu and everyone! I love the idea of connecting with other communities globally around a community action day. What about a day that represents our future - Universal Children's Day on November 20? The month of November could then be used as the Community Action planning month around issues that create a positive future for children around the world.

[Divya Sarma]

This is a great idea Rituu. I would agree with Gaston's and Bobby's suggestion that we keep the dates flexible, so that communities can decide the priority issue around which they want to come around. It can be HIV, malaria, or even things like mental health, child survival etc.

Samraksha also looks at observing multiple events specially WAD and candle light memorial day with the communities, specially at the villages. In recent years many of these events are observed by the communities as their own initiative, with Samraksha being an appreciative audience for their efforts. Communities have also used the space provided by this day to make effective assessments. Doing it as part of a global movement of change will definitely spur them further. One suggestion I have is that while at one level it is good to have online sharing with communities across the world, this event also builds in a platform for local sharing, learning and transfer processes, where neighboring communities get together to share and learn.

[bobby ramakant]

Thanks Rituu for this suggestion. Yes, of course, it sounds like a great move ahead. This is sadly what is missing - development sector still works in silos and therefore miss out on strategic opportunities to speak their world, and communicate about strengths and community's responses to conditions they might be dealing with in daily lives.

May be Community Action Day can take benefit from already recognized 'days' of significance, like the World Hepatitis Day (28 July) just passed by, and mobilize groups if they will like to speak up or act up! Or the World Heart Day (biggest killer, 10 times more than HIV or TB for example - 12 million + deaths a year and anyone of us can be dealing with heart diseases) is in September, World Mental Health Day (10 October) is another benchmark for sure, lucky are those are really not dealing with mental health issues, and so on.

One of the most significant outcome of this initiative, potentially, can be breaking of silos single-issue specific development agencies are working on at times.

Let me know how best can we work and look forward to this,
warm wishes, bobby

[EPHRAIM]

Dear Rituu
These days are golden opportunities we should not miss. There are other equally important days we can use to let our messages go through. I think of World Breastfeeding Days. We in Cameroon have a lot of experience working with Community Based Organizations ( CBO), these groups mainly women perform their self assessment on common issues like child eduction, for example, what should we do to make sure our children go to school?
Here are some interesting results;
1. Have a child education scheme where they contribute money from the beginning of the school year and save this money in a cooperative in preparation for the next academic year. This has increased school attendance in the community and also school performance.
Rituu, there are a lot of these examples also including reducing the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in a given community.

In short, any opportunity we have to meet with communities and talk about the community life competence, we should use it.
Regards
Ephraim

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Dear Mr Ripudaman, Emmanuel and Ronny,

Thanks for your inputs.

We had thought of World AIDS Day or World Malaria Day as the likely date because communities and organisations usually undertake some activity on these days. If some other date suits your community please go ahead with it. I have had some interesting queries and comments. Some want to do self-assessment with their colleagues and some with their families, Gaston with his Sports team. Manoj brought to my attention World Hep C day.

Look forward to hearing from more members.

Cheers,

Rituu

[Ripudaman]

Dear Rituu,
This is wonderful, new ideas have start pouring in and I am sure, are trigerring 'thought machines' in many people around, I am one of them. I will be back soon, Cheers!

[Emmanuel Mwale]

Dear Rituu, Brilliant idea you have just put down and 100% for it, I am still pondering the best way i can approach it but would say what Gaston has put down is mesmerizing as well (sharing on face book), hey! where was this when i was thinking? we cant wait though for the specific date in a year calendar. Of late i have put a suggestion to our group which is yet to be adopted. we will target groups of people separately through community activities of what they know best like talents, sports, knitting and cooking, this will selectively be done on a monthly interval with an utmost selection of group reps @ the end to bring out one thing. students are going on holiday in my country and this is the great time for us to get started with the community activities and hence share the outcome. at the end i would propose a date we can all come down and bring our outcomes making sure all of us are involved in a simple way possible.

[Ronny Waikhom]

Hi Rituu,
It is a great idea indeed. Have you thought of any specific dates for this? Maybe I could try and share this with people whom we are presently in touch with. Physical events such as the one Boris had suggested will not be possible for me, especially at the current setting where I'm. But maybe if Gaston comes up with some feasible idea then I can probably join him, considering the fact that we stay quite close by. I will think over this and let you know soon. At present I'm swamped with too many things and the usual deadlines. Cheers!