Engaging from deep principles

Nenan is a child and family services initiative serving the treaty 8 region of northeastern BC.  Have a look at their work here for simple, direct, culturally based ways of engaging everyone in their community as they create a new system deeply rooted in culture and integrated world views.

Nenan has utilized the Circle of Rights Community Empowerment Process (formerly Triple A) in many communities in the north-east providing an invaluable wealth of information on the strengths, assets and resources- specifically culturally based, as well as risks and challenges to supporting children and families. A deep exploration of community values has also been undertaken providing a wonderful foundation from which systems and services will be built upon.

A grounding principle of the Circle of Rights approach is that the wisdom of Elders and community members,   including young people, will be central to the redesign of services for children and families to ensure the strengths of the past and present are respectfully applied to creating holistic, strength based services for children today and for generations to come

There is a fine art in doing this work to surface the values that are inherent in the language and way of life and translate them into principles and ways of working without trivializing them or minimizing them or creating boiler plate statements.  The 15 projects that are gathered here at the conference I am co-hosting in harrison Hot Springs are feeling their ways through, and producing marvelous work.