Working session 2 summary

Plan:
In small groups, participants discussed these questions:
  • What are the strategies organizations would want to implement for partnership growth, communication and connectedness?
  • What are the potential challenges to implementing these strategies?
  • What are some of the policies and procedures that organizations would want to adopt or revise in order to create partnership that help generate ‘glue’?
Glue has been identified as: “The adhesive substance of a partnership that promotes and sustains trust, communication, connectedness, and meaningful work efforts and products. Glue ranges from building sweat equity to establishing credibility, to being able to translate and navigate between the community and academic realms. Glue resonates in the process, infrastructure, policies and procedures that honor open communication, fairness, trust, and meaningful planning processes that ensure each partner is respected and heard.“
Summary of discussion:
  • Stakeholder groups will help move the process forward
  • Discussed how heart health project at SDHU is a great example of community based research in Sudbury
  • Generating ideas where help is needed (e.g., skills, capacities)
  • Issues that may arise when seeking funding
  • Resources that are needed to support collaborative process:
- A convenient meeting space
- Communications to assure that everyone is aware of agendas and decisions
- Resources to provide occasional retreats for the partnership to reevaluate and plan strategically
- Time spent in collaboration and meetings by all organizational representatives.
Research questions and areas of interest:
  • Idea of children struggling socially/emotionally
  • Why Sudbury is ranking low in school readiness (investigate physical health/wellbeing/emotional maturity)
  • How do we help? What would help?

Moving forward/Next Steps:
  • People should work together on small  projects to move our process forward
  • Projects could be small and tangible and not overly ambitious 
  • Work on understanding what is needed in the community, and a project that would make a difference.
Go back to List of the Working Session Summaries Page
Go to Event Report: Dr. Janzen Page