 |
 |
Despite the enormous amount of money, myriad programs, and incredible human effort being devoted to health, social and educational issues, indicators suggest that most communities are making little or no gains in becoming “healthier.”
We believe that much of the lack of collective success is due to a misalignment between our objectives and the approaches we are taking to reach them. We would like to suggest that community leaders closely examine their core beliefs about the issues which concern them as well as the underlying assumptions of the programs and approaches that they are using to create change.
The Core Beliefs which drive CommuniTeam programs and services follow.
We believe:
CommuniTeam helps communities weave together their many and varied resources to address issues of concern and move to a higher quality of community life. We help to develop community leaders capable of engaging and leading hundreds of others in collaborative effort--we develop community leaders and leaderful communities.
• every community has most, if not all, of the resources it needs to be “healthy,”
• every community has a unique set of both positive and negative conditions which contribute to the health of the system and of various subsystems within it,
• reactive, corrective efforts focused on individual, group or community problems are essential to a balanced approach to change but they will not reduce the incidence of these problems at either a community or societal level,
• the only way to reduce the incidence of social, health or economic issues is to affect the conditions which created and sustain them,
• social and community norms play a significant role in personal decision-making,
• efforts focused on creating healthier norms and conditions in our communities address the root causes of many problems simultaneously, and are therefore a much more efficient approach to creating healthier communities as compared to symptom-focused methods,
• representatives of all subsystems in the community must be engaged in needs/opportunity identification, visioning, and change processes,
• it is not reasonable to expect change by isolating only one segment of a community’s population as the target of that change (ie-youth),
• health, at an individual and community level, is not simply the absence of problems.
The complexity of today’s social, health, environmental, economic and educational challenges require that we tap into the passion, experience, insights, and expertise of an entire community of people. CommuniTeam helps create powerful community teams. We do this by training coalitions of community leaders to:
• develop team and leadership skills that they can use to engage and develop others,
• facilitate a community-wide vision and plan for creating a healthier community,
• promote an approach to community “opportunities” that is inviting to a wide range of community members,
• identify and engage young people and other underutilized community resources,
• enhance inter-organizational collaboration,
• create youth-adult partnerships.
What others have had to say about CommuniTeam.
        |