Collective Learning: Practices to Build Community Power, Equity and Systems Change
482 people attended COO’s session at the Collective Impact Forum, Collective Learning: Practices to Build Community Power, Equity, and Systems Change, on April 26. This learning session, geared towards others working on collective impact projects, discussed key community-centered capacity building activities, impacts, learnings and contributions to community power building and systems and policy change outcomes and progress. For Communities of Opportunity (COO), the investments into the individuals, organizations and partnerships that serve our communities for greater effectiveness, creativity, and longevity, are critical for building a pathway to a future where all communities in King County thrive.
COO defines capacity building as ‘supporting leadership development, organizational and partnership infrastructure, and sustained civic capacity to actualize equity in policy after policy, issue after issue, year after year.’ In this session presenters described how COO aims to create learning spaces not just to transfer knowledge, information and skills but the ability to build confidence, resilience and power within individuals and communities that face systemic injustice.
April 26, 2023 Collective Impact Forum, Collective Learning: Practices to Build Community Power, Equity, and Systems Change
The presentation shared the key learnings from COO’s capacity building and learning activities and partners, as well as the successes and challenges of so far in the operationalizing COO’s capacity building framework and in the various learning and capacity building activities themselves. And, how COO’s approaches may be transferable to other collaborative efforts interested in transformative ways to build equity.
Presenters:
Kalayaan Domingo, former COO staff and current Workforce Demonstration Pilot Project Manager – Best Starts for Kids, Department of Community and Human Services, King County
Kalayaan Domingo is a Project Manager with King County, partnering with Communities throughout the County to drive systemic change for a more equitable and just King County. She believes that healthy communities are built through practicing solidarity, interdependence and healing, to restore and balance where systemic oppression has created inequities and division. Kalayaan graduated with an MPH from the Community Oriented Public Health Practice Program at the University of Washington and comes from a line of community and labor organizers in the Seattle region. Her lived experience and formal training serve as a foundation to her approach to building and sustaining healthy communities. When she isn’t working Kalayaan can be found on the soccer field cheering on her two sons or diving in to one of the many books on her ever-growing stack.
Leika Suzumura, Evaluator, Nourishian For Life
Leika Suzumura is a community health advocate specializing in nutrition education and community driven evaluation. She earned her BS in Nutrition from Bastyr University in 2006 and completed her Masters of Public Health at the University of Washington in 2020, specializing in Community Oriented Public Health Practice. She has been working in the Rainier Valley of South Seattle for 15 years, providing experiential opportunities for people to learn and share food traditions that support health, connect us to our community, and honor the land our food comes from. When Leika is not cooking with the community, she can be found playing Capoeira or hosting an event at the Union Cultural Center where she and her husband are the Guardians.
Sarah Tran, Consultant, Sama Praxis
Sarah provides leadership coaching, facilitation, training, and consultation to community organizations, philanthropic foundations, businesses, and government entities committed to advancing racial justice and equity. Drawing on her roots as a daughter of Vietnamese refugees, a survivor of violence, a former Executive Director of color, and organizer - she is committed to supporting leaders of color as they mobilize their communities and transform systems to support collective liberation.
Moderator: Whitney Johnson, COO staff.
Whitney is the lead for the Learning Community strategy of Communities of Opportunity, and responsible for the operations, partnerships, and activities within the Learning Community strategy. This includes working in collaboration with community and Sama Praxis on the capacity building framework that supports and strengthens the relationships and community power building work of the community organizations and groups that are within and aligned with the COO initiative. Whitney has an MPH and is committed to a public health practice of community care and anti-oppression.
The Summit Whova site will be available for three months, or until July 26, 2023. Please review the recordings and download materials by that date. After that date, the site will come down.