Coming together with others as part of an intentional learning community provides invaluable opportunities to build new relationships, share knowledge, gain new insights to advance our collective work and ultimately energize and inspire one another.
This page offers a listing of upcoming learning opportunities that you may want to be part of:
These face-to-face events offer you the opportunity to join with colleagues and peers who are actively working in their communities.
June 10-12, 2013 - Neighbours: Policies and Programs
We invite you to celebrate the life's work of John McKnight and gather to explore how programs and policies can make neighbours effective agents of change in their communities.
Together, we want to deeply understand how to advance the importance of neighborhoods, explore what programs have advanced neighbourliness, and discuss what policies cause communities to take the role of neighbours seriously.
Joining John McKnight is Jim Diers and Al Etmanski - two of the most important thinkers and advocates for neighbours and belonging in North America. Jim and Al are also both faculty of John's ABCD. This unprecedented national gathering is exploring programs that advance neighbourhood resilience and capacity. This event will also discuss (and possibly co-create) cutting edge policy ideas within cities that promote belonging and neighbourliness. Most importantly it will celebrate the work of John McKnight as he receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo that week.
This gathering will provide you with inspiration, connections, knowledge and specific tools to offer the leadership required to connect, engage and mobilize citizens in your community and beyond to generate a shared vision and action plan; in turn, developing programs and policies for change.
When and Where:
June 10-12, 2013, Kitchener, Ontario
October 7-11, 2013 - 2013 Communities Collaborating Institute: Accelerating Impact
The Communities Collaborating Institute (CCI), Tamarack's signature, week-long learning event, provides a unique opportunity to join a dynamic learning community of practitioners who desire new ways to lead, engage and transform their communities and then accelerate impact by linking local efforts to provincial, state and national agendas.
The 2013 Communities Collaborating Institute: Accelerating Impact is geared specifically for those wanting to strengthen their capacity to create large-scale, community-wide impact – linked to provincial/state or national agendas. Please browse this web section to learn more about this event and how you can become a member of this dynamic Learning Community from October 7-11, 2013 in Edmonton Alberta.
Tamarack and Vibrant Communities offer free tele-learning seminars that are brought to you live via telephone
conference line. Dial-in
information will be emailed to you shortly after you register for an upcoming call. After the seminar,
we will send you a post email with a links and further resources for learning. Note: While there is no fee associated with your participation, the tele-bridge service we use is based in the U.S., so long distance charges through your long distance service provider may apply.
Title: Transformative Scenario Planning: Accelerating How we Change the Future Speakers: Adam Kahane and Paul Born Location: via conference call Date: Thursday, May 30th, 2013 - 11:55am - 1:00 pm, ET Details: Join Adam Kahane, key thought-leader at Tamarack's 2013 CCI: Accelerating Impact for a dialogue about how his experiences engaging leaders with diverse - and at times conflicting - perspectives to work together effectively on complex social challenges. Learn how and why processes like Change Labs and Transformative Scenario Planning are proving to be effective in creating accelerated impact on social change efforts that span a wide variety of issue areas and scales.
Title: Planning & Evaluating Policy Change Speaker: Mark Cabaj Location: via conference call Date: Thursday, June 13th, 2013 - 11:55am - 1:00 pm, ET Details: Join in this exciting free tele-learning with Mark Cabaj as he shares how to plan and evaluate policy change.
Mark Cabaj is a leading thinker on developmental evaluation and policy change. He is a Tamarack Associate and regular facilitator of Evaluating Community Impact and the Communities Collaborating Institute. In addition to his work as the chief of Here To There Consulting, Mark is a dynamic speaker and community leader. This will be a wonderful opportunity to learn more about planning and evaluating policy change.
There will be an opportunity for questions towards the end of the interview. Do register for this learning opportunity, even if you cannot attend you will receive a follow up email with a link to the full interview.
Title: Theory of Change: An Evaluation Methodology to Accelerate Learning
Speakers: Tom Kelly and Liz Weaver Location: via conference call Date: Thursday, June 27th, 2013 - 11:55am - 1:00 pm, ET Details: Tom Kelly, a key thought-leader at Tamarack's 2013 CCI: Accelerating Impact is renowned for his ground-breaking evaluation of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's ten-year community change initiative Making Connections using the Theory-of-Change methodology. Making Connections is an initiative that focuses on developing family economic success in several communities across the United States. Join Tom and Liz Weaver for this tele-learning and discover more about why the Theory of Change methodology is well suited for comprehensive collective impact initiatives; and, how it can be harnessed as a practice to accelerate shared learning. Tom will also profile more about his current evaluation work as the Vice President for Knowledge, Evaluation and Learning for the Hawai'i Community Foundation.
Title: Becoming a Networked Non-Profit Speaker: Beth Kanter Location: via conference call Date: Thursday, August 15th, 2013 - 11:55am - 1:00 pm, ET Details: Organizations and communities are shifting and changing - join in this tele-learning to learn from Beth Kanter about how you organization can create change by networking and leveraging solid data. Beth Kanter is the author of Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits.
She co-authored the book titled "The Networked Nonprofit" with Allison Fine in 2010. Her second book, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, with Co-Author KD Paine, was published in 2012. Beth has over 30 years working in the non-profit sector in technology, training, capacity building, evaluation, fundraising, and marketing.
Beth is an internationally recognized trainer who has developed and implemented effective sector capacity building programs that help organizations integrate social media, network building, and relationship marketing best practices.
She curated NTEN's "We Are Media: Nonprofit Social Media Starter Kit," an online community of people from nonprofits who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world.
Practitioners meet by telephone and online to learn and share their experiences.The calls will focus mainly on poverty reduction, but are open and relevant to anyone working with multi-sector, comprehensive and community-based approaches to social issues.
Each Community of Practice (CoP) usually meets every two months at a regular time via conference call; topics are determined by the members of the CoP. Dial-in information and background on each call are sent by email about a week before each call.
The CoPs are smaller, more interactive groups than Tamarack's open tele-learning calls; we expect CoP members will commit to participating regularly, to freely sharing their experience and occasionally leading a call.
You need only register once to join a specific CoP; you will then receive notices of future calls for that CoP. To register or if you no longer want to receive the emails for a specific CoP, please email us here.
The Communities Collaborating Institute (CCI), Tamarack's signature, week-long learning event, provides a unique opportunity to join a dynamic learning community of practitioners who desire new ways to lead, engage and transform their communities and then accelerate impact by linking local efforts to provincial, state and national agendas.
