Community Development Network

Photo: Many different hands placed on a log, by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

This public page is a work in progress and will be updated with information that participants have consensus on. For issues yet to be discussed, they will be in Google Docs that are accessible only to participants.

Request to join our Facebook Group - Community Development Network SG

Request to join our Google Group - Community Development Network SG (for group discussions and collaborations)

Request to contribute to our Collective Blog - for longer form reflections and essays

Look here for our current collective understanding of community development in Singapore - Comm Dev Wiki Page

Purpose

Vision

Insert vision statement

Mission

Insert mission statement

Objectives

Insert objectives

Projects

Getting to Know One Another - to help participants know one another, articulate a vision, dream, values and what we should do together.

Creating a Shared Knowledge Base - to collate and make sense of information about community development (best practices, case studies, research etc) that is relevant to practitioners, organisations and policymakers.

Community Festival / Forum 2019 - to co-organise, co-design a forum about the community, for the community and by the community

(If you want to insert a project here to solicit for inputs or collaboration, please request for a user id and password by sending an email to justin.lee@nus.edu.sg)

Community Fellows - to conduct solutions-focused research together with their communities

General Guiding Principles

Openness sustained by trust, and balanced by integrity

The network should be a safe space for participants to share honest views and constructive feedback. Openness creates vulnerability too, so it should be sustained by trust and integrity among participants, so that new or diverse ways of thinking are not dampened.

Consensus-driven balanced by respect for diverse viewpoints

Through dialogue, participants should aspire to consensus on network matters. Where there is disagreement and collective decisions need to be made, voting can be the less preferred option.

Contributions should be participant-led and strengths-based

Network matters should be defined and led by participants themselves, tapping into their areas of expertise.

Everyone is encouraged to propose and take on projects or activities, and the network should reduce barriers to initiating and mobilising participation where possible.

Fun and informality

The network should be fun because community is built upon informal relationships and we should invest in those relationships.

(Note: These are working principles and will be reviewed and refined as we go along. Possibly new ones will be introduced and old ones removed. They will also be up- or down-voted by participants so that the most relevant ones go to the top, indicating a sense of priority. Guiding principles are only useful to the extent that they are useful reminders to achieve core ideals we tend to forget or overcome key habits we find hard to break; they are less useful when internalise them or already take them as given. They also become more useful when they articulate the relationship to alternative or competing values, providing an indication of how these conflicts might be resolved)

Network Events for 2019

Meet-up 1: On the Design of the Network

Date - Friday, 31 May 2019

Time - 10.00 am - 12.00 pm

Venue - Credit Suisse

Agenda

• What are our objectives? What value can we get out of it?
• Who will co-organise and participate, and in what way?
• Are there other existing networks already relevant to community work?
• Based on objectives and existing circumstances, how should we structure the network, and decision-making?

What was discussed

Link to the consolidated inputs from participants about the objectives and design of the network

Link to Ijlal's fieldnotes on the meeting.

This is meant to be a collective document so please add points or reflections to this document. You can comments within [brackets] and also identify yourself.

Key points

• Participants agreed to meet monthly
• We can take our time to get to know one another better--through play--before deciding how to run the network
• Those who have ideas and want to do something can already start forming groups and starting discussions. Please create project pages or documents and post links to the 'Projects' header above, or start a discussion at the Google Group - Community Development Network SG. 

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Meet-up 2: Let's Get to Know One Another First + Organise a Community Festival?

Date - 30 July 2019 (Tuesday)

Time - 2.00 pm - 5.00 pm

Venue - Meeting Room, Institute of Policy Studies, 1 C Cluny Road, House 5 S(259599)

Agenda

1. Getting to Know One Another - 20 mins
2. Co-Design and Collaborate on Community Festival / Forum (so far: IPS & Beyond Social Services) - 1 hour
3. Community Fellows: Invitation for inputs and partnerships (IPS) - 30 mins
4. Contributing to MSF's / MCCY Community Development Framework - 30 mins

Other possible agenda:

• clarify the definition of community & community development

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Meet-up 3:

Date - TBC August

Time - TBC

Venue - A Good Space - Vincent will check

Agenda

1. Reflections and Inputs on Network Objectives & Design - 30 mins
2. Any Other Business - 0 mins

Resources

NCDD’s Engagement Streams Framework - to help navigate the range of dialogue and deliberation approaches available. How are Citizens Juries are different from Deliberative Polling?  When should you use World Cafe, rather than Open Space? 

Citizen Lab's guide to inclusive participation on a digital platforms