What is it?
Community Bridge is constructed from passion, research and practice. It is a process that connects ancient cultural practices with modern social science theory to address our most pressing challenges.
At its footing, Community Bridge is about building connections through dialogue to address the basic human need of being heard, accepted and part of something greater than ourselves. It is also a reflective process that requires deep listening from a place of non-judgement to form stronger connections to one another and the whole.
Community Bridge was constructed from linking together the building blocks of many other Whole System Transformational methods including The Circle Way (Sarah MacDougall & Christina Baldwin), Open Space Technology (Harrison Owen) and Whole Scale Change (Sylvia James & Paul Tolchinsky).
Community Bridge is four simple steps:
- Share ME – who am I, what do I value and why am I here?
- Connect WE – despite the varying viewpoints or differing experiences, what did we hear that connects us?
- Design POSSIBILITY – What do we want the future to look like?
- Act RESPONSIBLY – Create action implementation plans to get there
What are the purpose and benefits?
The purpose is to create connections within a system in order to harness human spirit and collective intelligence thereby generating purposeful and responsible action in a common direction.
The benefits include increased understanding of one another, alignment around a shared vision of the future, agreement around next steps and increased accountability around action which accelerates the change process.
When and where to use your method?
Community Bridge can be used effectively in a variety of public and private settings. Where we have seen success is in Healthcare, Manufacturing, Community Initiatives and Non-profit organizations.
Regardless of the setting, the method is effectively applied where there is rapid change, high complexity or conflict and a need to quickly attain understanding, alignment and action.
Community setting – working on complex issues such as prison reform or community health improvement initiatives where there are vastly different viewpoints about how to proceed and there are LOTS of different stakeholders, e.g. govt, non-profit, individual citizens, community groups, etc that have an interest in the outcome
In an organization, this might show up during an acquisition, in significant growth mode, or when the industry is changing more rapidly than the organization can keep up.
