Non profits
Coalitions and Membership Organizations
Future search conferences
Organized community sessions in five geographic regions to get input from historically underserved communities, regarding SPU’s Strategic Business Plan. Compiled a team of multi-lingual and multicultural contractors to recruit, facilitate and record notes in six languages: Spanish, Somali, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Khmer. Also conducted sessions in English for African-American, general low-income residents and seniors. Provided input in agenda design, managed implementation and produced summary report.
Technical assistance for equitable partnerships.
Provided technical assistance for three years to school district and community-based agency partnerships. School districts included: Seattle, Kent, Federal Way and Highline. Aimed to reduce racial disparities in school outcomes, teams included parents and community-based agencies new to district contracts. We worked closely with these new partnerships to improve equitable leadership among school staff, agency staff and parents; equitable power and decision making across race, language and job status.
Immigrant and Refugee Community Engagement Project - Conducted 12 focus groups and 100 interviews in ten languages. We gathered customer knowledge and experience with a broad range of city services, need for and access to bi-lingual services, needs of grass roots organizations and gathered community advice for civic engagement methods for their community members. Cultural groups included: Spanish-speaking, Iraqi, Asian: Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer, and African: Oromo, Amharic, Tigrinya, and Somali.
Conducted two strategic plans and provided management support to Real Change, the largest street newspaper in the U.S. The first strategic plan, with inclusion of homeless newspaper sellers and general readers, resulted in a new organizational vision, catapulting Real Change to an expansive level of growth and impact. The exploration of racial and class justice issues resulted in Real Change becoming a local leader with major impact and influence. Our recommendations for staffing changes to match capacity needs enabled Real Change to manage its continued growth and community impact.
HIV/AIDS Care Planning Council - 3 finding cicles.
Redesigned processes for the 2-year funding allocation process for the Councils. Consisting of public health staff, agency staff and advocates for various population groups, the Council had a contentious history in reaching funding priorities, which were binding. Our revisions to the Council process enabled all parties to be heard and supported the group to collaboratively make funding decisions for the whole. Emerging Design Consulting facilitated this process for three funding cycles.
Facilitated the planning and implementation of a
Assisted with design and co-facilitated a future search sponsored by major California foundations to address issues of child obesity in Orange County. Future search conference is a very effective method of community-wide systems change that ‘brings the whole system in the room’. Over 3-days the 90 participants addressed systemic issues including food in schools and food availability in low income neighborhoods, exercise and health promotion, and created an action plan to move forward. From this conference, partnerships with parents, schools, public health, city and county departments emerged. Parent and youth voice rose as leaders in creating solutions and new models of philanthropy emerged that support community activism.