How Do We Know Our Community? [PDF]

2016

John O’Brien & Beth Mount

John O’Brien and Beth Mount

The way we know our community is fateful for our capacity to support people at risk of marginalization to occupy contributing social roles and develop diverse, good relationships.

This framework visualizes a person with DD, their allies and partners as if they form a neural net: each person can act as a sensor and the whole can make sense of what comes in and orchestrate action toward interesting opportunities and more useful knowledge.

The worksheet on the next page allows assessment of two determinants of the extent, depth and suppleness of community knowledge:
• The extent to which we are personally engaged in the settings and activities that compose life in community.
• The degree of intentional openness to sense possibilities for involvement and action.

Use the worksheet to start a conversation about how you currently know your community and how you might come to know it better.