Welcome aboard

Casey Hoy's picture

Welcome to the Advance Northeast Ohio Partners working group of the Ohio Local Food Systems Collaborative.  I hope you’ve spent a few minutes getting acclimated to the site and how it works.  It can serve as both a simple email listserve (post a message like this one to the group and it gets emailed to the entire group, automatically) and as a repository for these communications, documents, links to resources, events, etc. that are generated by or of interest to the network.  But the reason for using it isn’t to build a repository, it’s to build a local food system in NE Ohio.  And in the process we hope to build a rural-urban partnership, and an economic development approach with a sustainability core value into the Advance Northeast Ohio Plan.

I mentioned the book “Networks that Work” by Paul Vandeventer at our meeting in August.  In it he describes three kinds of networks:  cooperating, coordinating and collaborating.  The levels of risk for participants as well as potential for systemic change resulting from the network activities are lowest for cooperating and highest for collaborating.  All three create relationships, information sharing and communication among participants.  But a collaborating network generally is distinguished by participants (individuals and organizations) who are committed to long-term systemic change or reform; willing to give up old notions of how the system works and their role in it; ready to bring conflict out in the open and find a means of addressing it; and willing to redefine and sometimes drastically alter their roles, how they operate, and their advocacy for resource allocation.  Risky, but with potential for real change.

It seems to me that many if not all of those who choose to participate in this group are willing to serve in a network facilitation role, which can be either the work of an individual or a voluntary group.  Vandeventer describes these parts to that role:
•    Help members communicate, share information, clarify interests, and define genuine differences.
•    Help members identify tasks needed to accomplish the purpose.
•    Guide interactions for smooth and efficient work on these tasks.
•    Spot opportunities for members.
•    Locate and help secure resources.
•    Seek ways to refresh and renew network capability and function.
•    Build the network by identifying and helping to bring in new contributing members.

That last role is an immediate opportunity, given that we had a few others who were interested in working together in this direction at the November 3 meeting, and we all know of still others who could contribute.  There is an “Invite a Friend” link that you can use to send an invitation to join us.  

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