Neighbourhoods USA Annual Conference, much like Vitalize, is a wonderful place to get tips and tools for operating neighbourhood associations. EFCL decided to send a representative this year, I, Valerie Pachal, to the conference in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those brothers south of the border were all over me for ideas of how things get done up here and I was reciprocating and discovered a few tips but mostly that things just aren’t so bad as we sometimes whine about.
The keynote speaker was President Clinton - the benefits of being the town a president hails from - and he commented that each community possesses the “seeds of its own regeneration, and it depends on the actions taken by community leaders. As the nation seethes with renewed political partisanship, there’s not enough talk about what’s happening at the neighborhood level, and that we have to get back to American and build up from the grassroots.” In our terms - we need to live local!
In closing, President Clinton told the group, “Every time a neighborhood activist takes on a project to improve his or her community, they are giving other residents a solid place to stand.” Go to it people.
The Americans have economic challenges we have not begun to be forced to face and top on the list of their concerns are Urban Decay and Affordable Housing. Most of the agencies get very few government dollars and only a minuscal handful receive the kind of municipal support that we get from our City Government in the form of land and operational grants.
The rest of the not for profit challenges are the same here as they are in the USA - how do we get consensus, how do we get heard by council, how can council reach neighbourhoods. The number one issue is the same as ours: How do we recruit volunteers and not burn out our existing stand bys?
Cross generational recruitment is key to the survival so the advice is pretty direct and a little difficult for the old folks on the board to accept in some cases.
¨ You can’t do things the way you always did them.
¨ You have to let young energy find its own wings and create its own programs - they have new ways to make old things that never worked function very well.
¨ You have to understand that they are the “I --generation” and this means “what’s in it for me” (often what’s in it for them also benefits the community) and it also means technology as in I-phone or I-touch.
This doesn’t have to be scary and already EFCL has cooperated with NextGen to create some great programs that include other demographics. Join in on the fun. (see page 1 and 12 for all ages activities– )
EFCL hopes to gather a panel to help disseminate in more detail how to think about your young volunteers. Lets’ get new blood on our boards!
Watch for more tips and perhaps workshop dates in future issues or E News. Some materials will soon be made available online so check our resources later this summer.