Making Change: Facilitating Community Action

by Jeanne Hites Anderson, Maurine Pyle

Overview

Every community has issues or opportunities that need to be addressed. The expert knowledge of community members could be the key to creating lasting change. By making community members into facilitators, Making Change: Facilitating Community Action suggests they can guide community members through the process of making change and to help them determine their goals and methods.

The aim of this book is to enable facilitators to identify concerns and address, enable and foster change at the local level through effective facilitation. This book follows a six-stage model for creating change. Beginning with issue awareness, it continues through getting to know the team they are working with, seeking information on the issue and community, through facilitating the planning and community development through evaluation. This book focuses on the human side of the change process while also teaching the practical skills necessary for individuals to reach their goal.

Making Change is for people interested in making change to improve their community, including students, community activists, local government and educational leaders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367444778
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/16/2020
Pages:	398
Product dimensions:	7.38(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jeanne Anderson is a professor emerita of St Cloud State University, St Cloud, Minnesota. She began facilitating while working in the business world in training and performance improvement. She found through her volunteer work that there were many overlapping practices between change initiatives in business and the community.

Maurine Pyle is a Quaker facilitator with over 40 years of social change experience in a wide variety of professional and volunteer settings. She is committed to a form of leadership known as servant leadership. She holds master's degrees in Organizational Development and Linguistics.

Table of Contents

Stage 1: Issue Awareness 1.The Beginning 2.Observe, Wonder and Reflect 3.Detours Stage 2: Getting to Know You 4.Reflective Facilitation 5.Calling the First and Subsequent Meetings 6.Recruit and Retain Volunteers 7.Clearing Mental Space for Facilitation 8.Building Rapport and Unity Stage 3: Information Seeking 9.Mental Models and Frameworks 10.Spectrum of Attitudes 11.What’s Happening Now? 12.Visioning 13.Change Resistance and Readiness 14.Wondering and Hypothesis Testing 15.Planning Perspectives 16.Force-Field Analysis 17.Identifying the Play and the Players in a Community 18. Getting Grounded, Gathering Data Together Stage 4: Facilitation of Planning 19. Getting Started on Planning 20. Strategies and Tactics 21. Learning Objectives 22. No Tin Cups: Fundraising and Stewardship 23. Building Alliances and Collaborations 24. Choreography of Conversation 25. Listening Deeply 26. Setting the Stage for Productive Meetings 27. Observing the Action 28. Asking Good Questions 29. Trouble on the Team Stage 5: Community Development 30. Choosing and Developing Solutions 31. Communications 32. Program 33. Policy Change 34. Physical Environment 35. Support 36. Monitoring and Managing Change Stage 6: Evaluation and Conclusion 37. Leadership, Sustainability and Renewal 38. Evaluation 39. Disengagement: It’s Been Nice, But I Really Must Be Going

Editorial Reviews

"Oh, how I wish I had this book through the decades I have volunteered for self-help and non-profit mental health groups and in my neighborhood!!! So much valuable information. A real roadmap. And it’s such a fun read. Thank you, Maurine and Jeanne, for putting this down so we know where we are going without having to learn from all our mistakes."

Celinda Jungheim, Board Chair Emeritus, Recovery International

"There is definitely a need for this book. Our society today has a crucial need for activism to address the problems we are facing. People all over the world are organizing to address social problems; it is important for them to know a practical approach to accomplishing social change."

Dona J. Reese, Professor at the School of Social Work, Southern Illinois University

"Within minutes of starting to read this book, I started connecting the ideas to current projects I'm involved with. The authors balance rationale and purpose with practical ideas and specific examples that ring true. There is something for everyone to learn and apply. I want the book!

[It is] urgently needed to compensate for manipulative change agents who are taking advantage of societal divisions to benefit the already-too-powerful."

Sarah Heyer, Assistant Coordinator, Carbondale Conversations for Community Action

"Successfully used some practices listed in this book to plan a warming center for local homeless. Waiting for the full book to come to print so I can acquire it."

Scott Martin, Carbondale Interfaith Council, President

"This is an essential guide to community-building. I can see local governments, libraries, churches, grassroots action groups, employers, and employees building consensus, overcoming obstacles, and achieving their goals with the help of this book."

Diana Brawley Sussman, Carbondale Public Library Director and Co-chair of Nonviolent Carbondale

"Making Change: Facilitating Community Action is as clear and straightforward as its title, offering step-by-step methods, real-life examples and helpful graphics. I wish I'd had this resource when I was a new minister in town, and I look forward to applying its lessons to act more effectively."

Rev. Sarah C. Richards, Carbondale Unitarian Fellowship, Carbondale, IL

From the Publisher