Now it’s time to learn with empathy. How does the opportunity area you’re focusing on impact your community? What is working? What needs to change? What “workarounds” has your community developed to navigate the issue or challenge you are exploring?
Why It’s Important:
Knowing that an issue or challenge exists is different than understanding why it exists and how it impacts your community. By centering the experience of those directly impacted, we can identify needs, pain points, workarounds, and opportunities for the end result to be truly meaningful and impactful.
What We Learned
- The community should lead at every stage: designing your learning plan, collecting data, interpreting feedback and making sense of what is learned.
-
Trauma-informed care principles are universal, but their implementation is local. Learning from community considers the specific context, location, culture and people.
-
Thoughtful engagement builds trust. Too often, decisions are made without the perspective or consent of the communities that are impacted. The process of learning from and with your community can contribute to your result by disrupting systems that have historically stripped communities of their power.
Helpful Tools:
