Community Innovation Learning Logs | Bush Foundation

Interim and final reports from Community Innovation grantees that include key lessons learned from their grant project.

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Each stakeholder comes to the innovation process with a unique perspective and each perspective is able to both enlighten the process and muddy the waters. Although counterintuitive, these internal disputes and stalling of the solutions has brought clarity.

We have made progress towards achieving an innovation by creating an environment and space for innovation to occur.

To date we have used the inclusive element to get a sense of direction and to get stakeholders engaged.

The process has brought to light the hurdles and risks of implementing a building inspector position within the region through the South Central Dakota Regional Council. Concerns regarding the liability for the program have been expressed by stakeholders.

It is way, way harder to find acceptable mental health treatment than I knew. The barriers for access for women - stigma, money, transportation, cultural congruency of staff -- are just huge and it's very overwhelming.

Our Coalition grew in numbers quickly, so we have learned not to be in a hurry for growth of membership. Instead, we have learned it is important to simply bring people together in small groups around the ideas, initially.

Several key lessons were learned during this year’s work; however, the central theme in each item relates to the collaborative process. Developing a new degree that is delivered between two institutions is not as simple as it appears on the surface!

Flexibility and a willingness to be nimble and make changes to our plan as needed have been really important. Our project is very innovative with not a lot of models out there to guide us so we have had to become comfortable with knowing that there will be lots of adjustments made to the plan, and t

It has been extremely important to be both inclusive, in the beginning engaging partners in the ideas of the CP program, working with the paramedics, and the NDDoH, but as the process progresses, working as a collaborative is not only important, but essential into the program succeeding.

We facilitated regular meetings with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), University of Minnesota, and U.S. Forest Service to define how the path to professional employment would be forged for our youth participants.

Be prepared for the amount of time that it will take to implement a community project. Also through my time working with the Next Steps Program, CCCC and Spirit Lake Nation, I have learned that things will happen when they are meant to.

It has been our experience that the networking that occurs at these intentional events, often results in improved professional connections that expand understanding and mental health in our community.

Our best piece of advice would be that this work is hard and will take longer than anticipated.

FUSE has been successful as a coalition, but more so as a catalyst to additional changes, progress and investment in anti-trafficking work in ND across disciplines.

Four Bands Community Fund

Term: November 01, 2013 - June 30, 2016

Four Bands Community Fund, of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, will lead a reservation-wide effort to develop and implement a comprehensive workforce development program. Using a combined place- and sector-based approach, Four Bands will provide training opportunities to increase the capacity of individuals to gain meaningful employment while supporting businesses to build their capacity to effectively hire and retain qualified employees.

Instead of just trying to alleviate the symptoms of problems, the collaborative task force tried to address the societal patterns that create the underlying issues.

One key element that has been critical to our success is cultural grounding of our primary stake holders - our youth. This has allowed them to maintain healthy personal choices, focus their overall vision for the future and maintain intergenerational mentorships and perspectives.

One of the most important lessons we have learned is about partnering to increase our impact.

When we hit obstacles, we have been able to turn to our partners for assistance and quickly build momentum behind the project.

Collaborative has been obviously the most important element in our work. We work with over 13 tribal nations and communities and supporting each other is an essential aspect of the success of this work.

"This grant has given us funding to take our big idea and move forward. It has allowed us to collaborate with many leaders to focus upon increasing Native American nursing students by hiring experts to take action and create solutions within the community."

Distributing workload and trusting people involved to hold up their end was critical to this project.

Taking the opportunity for reflection at various points in the process was very important in working toward innovation. Without reflection, we might not have been open to revising our plan and implementing new possibilities.

One of NAZ’s core values is using a results-based accountability framework to drive our work. Data collection and analysis is just one part of this effort; more broadly, we use this framework to hold each other accountable to our shared goals.

Getting information from people who live and work in the community was originally lacking, resulting in incorrect information about the community. Once the people directly affected were part of the conversation, a better understanding of the issue happened, followed by more collaboration...

Engaging in open conversations with the tribal leadership is one of the most important aspects in operating an organization such as TNRG. By being transparent, the tribal leadership ensures trust in our purpose and organization and endorses our mission of becoming the centralized data center.

When writing a Community Innovation grant, it is difficult to predict what will develop when you listen to and seek input from farmers, ranchers and rural South Dakotan citizens...The stories they have shared about their own personal journey or family member journeys have been profound.

A significant activity that has been made possible by the Bush Foundation grant is the PAVSA SANE Program being involved in statewide efforts to standardize and improve medical forensic services for survivors of sexual assault across the state.

We learned quickly that simply inviting community members to a meeting or a training was not a type of outreach that was effective.

Inclusivity has been critical through our process of gaining a collective understanding and generating ideas by meeting with more than 200 people in the fields of housing, small business and financial accessibility.

Getting to conversations that matter requires careful preparation in terms of finding good questions and setting good ground rules for how the conversations will take place—making sure all voices are heard, and that people are listening for understanding and not involved in a debate.

Do not underestimate the thought, time and care that it takes to engage all parties that are part of an innovative process that seeks to be truly inclusive, collaborative and resourceful.

By including a wide-ranging selection of individuals from within both the LGBTQ communities and Health and Human Services sectors we were able to strengthen how we thought of the Standards of Inclusion.

This project would not have been successful without the collaborative effort of those that have been coming for over two years. Those dedicated members have time, effort and strong compassion for making our community a safer place to live for everyone while ensuring safety nets and resources are i

Collaboration has allowed individual agencies to see how they are part of the larger picture, and through working together, we are learning the social service sector will have more collective impact together than individually.

Our work has reaffirmed the need for more authentic and meaningful engagement with communities experiencing disparities...Building capacity for community engagement and understanding of racial justice issues are essential to addressing inequities.

Expect the Unexpected: Wonderful things can happen when our best made plans go wrong. Too often in our western way of thinking, especially for grants, we do our very best to adhere to the goals and tasks stated in the grant. However, sometimes things don’t go as planned and we have to improvise.

Certainly inclusivity is at the heart of what bicultural leadership seeks to uphold. The challenge here is the delicate movements within the wide range of approaches to leadership that underlie the macro distinctions of Native and non-Native leadership.

When planning the project, we knew that there would be practical challenges to engaging both youth and adults in a year-long collaborative process...we soon found out that the joint meetings were the most efficient and the most powerful.

The most important lesson we learned over and over again is that artists have to be at the core of arts organizations’ work. Artists are the people doing the creative work that organizations support, they make things happen.

Focusing on youth and parent input as well as the focus group information led to a deeper understanding of complex issues and increased communication which had been more crisis-related prior to these structured conversations.