Chicago Leads the Way in Community Weaving America Initiative

We spearheaded the Community Weaving America initiative following the election of President Obama and have been looking for six communities around the country to serve as demonstration sites to commence Community Weaving America. This initiative is a citizen engagement "process" model that increases community capacity to create more resilient communities that are adaptive to change.

The seven-phase implementation process takes approximately six months to implement. Each community identifies conveners from across community sectors to create the initial invitation to engage people in the process. Each phase informs the next phase, which in turn brings on board a broader cross-section of community and thereby growing the effort. The technology at www.goodneighbors.net weaves resources of the people and institutions together and makes them accessible to all.

The six sites will have an opportunity to collaborate on a larger grant. Each site will come up with a portion of funding for CW implementation. A Master Weaver will be assigned to work with each site. The grant will pay for the administrative costs to sustain Community Weaving over the first year.

Chicago became the first of the six sites to commence Community Weaving three months ago and is now entering Phase III. Attendees at the last gathering included Federal program directors from Dept of HHS, County staff, the American Red Cross, social service providers, emergency preparedness organizations, faith-based communities, foundations and local citizens. Below is the email to follow-up the gathering. It offers insight into Next Steps following Phase II: Partnering for Change event on March 27th.

We will train Community Weavers in April in Chicago who will be the linkages between formal and informal systems and create the reciprocal feedback loop to create an adaptive system between grassroots and institutions.

Let us know if you are interested in being a convener of a CW pilot project in your own community.

This initiative would not have been possible without the generous contribution of the Jeffrey Noyes Foundation who provide the seed money for the Community Weaving America Initiative.