Engaging Local Government Staff as Citizens to Support Local Farm and Food Entrepreneurs

This entry was contributed by on May 27th, 2016 at 10:05 am and is filed under , , .

I have spent the past few months settling in to my new role with the NC Growing Together Project, (NCGT) which aims to bring more local food products into mainstream wholesale markets across North Carolina.

One of my roles is to engage planners, economic developers, and small business assistance providers in understanding the local food supply chain in North Carolina and identifying ways to create an enabling and supportive environment for farms and food entrepreneurs.

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It’s been a really fun experiment to flip the engagement process upside down – thinking about creative ways to engage the local government staff in cities, counties, and towns in their local food system, both as citizens and as professionals. Continue Reading

How far down has your community engagement trickled?

This entry was contributed by on February 16th, 2015 at 2:30 pm and is filed under , , .

This in-your-face blog post about “Trickle-Down Community Engagement” has been a favorite topic of conversation among my fellow students and co-workers lately. It’s a great piece on the problem at the bottom of community engagement: it can’t be done effectively from the outside in.

The blogger is Mr. Vu Le, based in Seattle. He is Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, a start-up nonprofit with the mission of cultivating leaders of color to develop the capacity of ethnic-led nonprofits and foster collaboration between diverse communities to effect systemic change.

So what is trickle-down community engagement (otherwise referred to here as TDCE)?

As Mr. Le says, “this is when we bypass the people who are most affected by issues, engage and fund larger organizations to tackle these issues, and hope that miraculously the people most affected will help out in the effort, usually for free.”

How many people felt that simultaneous laugh and grimace when you read that, because you know how true it is? Continue Reading