Be open to surprise, make space for difference, do self-care: 3 things to make you and your community project thrive
Photo by mauro mora on Unsplash
By Zairah Khan, from WeavingLab (thank you for the cross-post! Original here)
If you ever started a community project, you probably know that what the project proposal says and what reality looks like are two different things. The key to not only surviving the chaos, but thriving in it, is both a good sense of humour and these 3 tips that will hopefully help you navigate the storm.
1. Be open to the unexpected
A lot of us have been conditioned in binary problem-solution thinking. The problem in a community setting is that linear thinking doesn’t always work.
Unlike a business, a community acts more like a natural system, its complex and decentralised. So when a problem arises, and you don’t have the answer, sometimes it is a matter of just putting your question out there and seeing what comes back. However, it may not look like anything you expected.
For example, when I was working on creating a community rain garden, we did not yet find the answer to how we were going to organise, let alone finance maintenance. Most our volunteers were enthusiastic about designing and creating a garden but structural support for weekly maintenance was more difficult to mobilize.
One of our volunteers mentioned a care institute, for the mentally disabled, that they had previously worked with. One of their regular staff was really enthusiastic to bring her clients to the garden. She told me that she was tired of being stuck indoors and so were her clients.
Not only were they happy to work hard, most of them actually loved the more repetitive work like weeding and picking rubbish from the bushes. One of the clients asks me each week if he can do the same next week.
This win-win situation would not have happened if I had thought to myself; my goal is to create a garden not to provide care for the mentally disabled. And unfortunately a lot of thinking does stop right there.
Holistic project management on the other hand recognises that providing care and creating a healthy environment are the same. This also means there are not one but many solutions to one problem. One is bound to cross your path if you are paying attention.
2. Make space for different people and their needs
In any community project relationships are not a bi-product, they are actually both the goal and the way. But if we get a lot of the same people agreeing really hard about what is wrong with the world, that really doesn’t take you very far.
Instead I would try inviting a bunch of weirdos with barely any common ground to start talking about their individual needs, skills and passions and its surprising to find how they start to build on each other.
Each person may have their own reasons to join a project beyond the social ones, varying from mental health issues to improving language and communication skills, or expanding knowledge and network. The project can be a medium to all of that because creating together means growing together. Having a personal driver ensures long term commitment.
In order to nudge this process a bit I sometimes use a structured approach called a ‘community asset analysis.’ In which I invite each member of the team/community to write down their desires/needs and what skills and knowledge they bring to the project.
Then we start to draw lines between all of these like in a marketplace (or mycelial network). This is where we start to see the big picture, where we need each of us to be there to make things work! It’s when we start to weave together a shared canvas.
It also means you actively need to create a culture where people feel safe to bring their whole selves. We’ve had one person crying in a team meeting because there was shit going on in her life, and it was so comforting for all of us to see that we had created a place where that was ok and we could support her in that moment.
3. Self-care is a precondition
People who work in community projects tend to be the self-sacrificing kind, which can be a real problem! Because when we carry too much responsibility we may neglect self-care.
I want to say it’s a marathon not a sprint but that sounds too much like hard work. Instead I would propose to approach a community project like a playground: there are many different people running around to have fun with, you don’t have to be everywhere at the same time.
And most importantly you are also there to have fun. Because that’s what will recharge your battery again and again.
What self-care looks like to you depends. For me it means striking a healthy balance between getting paid for what I do but not watching the clock all the time or worrying about whether my hours are covered. But at the same time having an awareness that I need to prioritise my personal needs and life in the same way as I prioritise my community work.
I hope these three big lessons help you get started or help keep you going, because what you do really matters! And make sure to share your own lessons in the comments below.
Zairah Khan is a founder of www.blueo2.com. Follow the community rain garden mentioned on instagram or visit www.toekomsttuintransvaal.nl