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PrintThe Role of a Weaver: Creating Results on Community Issues (cont'd)The SpringIn 2005, the Rhode Island Foundation convened the state’s environmental groups for a discussion about how they could work together to have a stronger political voice in the state. A diverse group of environmental and quality of life organizations met regularly for months, discussing topics and exploring whether a new coalition would be possible. Meg, now working for the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, facilitated many of these early meetings and worked off-line with members of the group to explore common ground. There was a lot of turf, and it was hard to find a topic on which they could all agree to work. Again, through previously built relationships, Brown University Professor Emeritus Harold Ward approached Meg and asked if the group could work on the issue of water management. Harold and Meg had both worked on this issue in the past. The State Water Resources Board had facilitated almost 100 stakeholders organized in a dozen committees to explore the issue of water management and water allocation, but none of the recommendations had been implemented. Advocacy was needed, but it was not a top issue of any one environmental organization. The timing was perfect to put the issue of water management on the political agenda. Amgen, a leading biotechnology firm, had just been refused increased water for their production plant in Rhode Island. They had approached the legislature asking them to pass a law entitling them to the water. Once again, relationship was more important than creating a massive structure for carrying out the work, something the Capacity Building Fund also believes. If Meg had not built the relationships she had over time and, more importantly, been approachable, then Ward may not have turned to her with his idea for the group. By being a listener focused on engaging others for common purpose rather than imposing a “leader’s agenda” on others, she was the one he turned to. She had been spending lots of one-on-one time with individuals trying to pick up on what might be the common agenda among them. Professor Ward knew that Meg was the connector – a type of leader, but not necessarily the leader at the top. Someone who could connect across boundaries and get something done. Possibly without the role Meg played the group would not have successfully stopped undemocratic “water rights” legislation from passing. As the Coalition for Water Security came together, the recognition was that environmental groups needed a louder voice, to learn to advocate well and to believe that working together was an important part of their work. The group checked in on strengthening the collaboration as much as it did on the results of its collective deliverables. Process and outcomes were co-equal goals of the project. Meg feels that the coalition became successful because of this equal emphasis and the time spent reflecting upon the quality of the working relationships. The CascadeThis coalition, with one success under its belt, asked, What next? The group had learned from its last attempt and did not set up a super structure of committees this time. Meg and several others began engaging stakeholders of all stripes around what they cared about and wanted to see done, identified key issues, and in a 3-hour meeting the group came together and selected transportation as their next collaborative issue. They named their new collaboration the Coalition for Transportation Choices. Key Tips Meg Has Learned
A portion of the groups who had been involved with the water security issues now became a core to crafting an agenda that opened up the work outside of environmental groups and engages others – like businesses who rely on a mobile workforce, and low and moderate income people who rely on public transportation. Meg’s own listserv has approximately 500 people on it – all the groups are educating their networks and engaging thousands of people in transportation issues. The “network” building capacity has morphed with each round that Meg has helped to catalyze. Meg says that what took a year for the Coalition for Water Security – choosing an issue to work on and implement – was reduced to a 3-month cycle of talking, meeting and deciding in part due to lessons she personally learned. But success came mostly because the groups had woven deeper relationships with each other. They had seen the collaborative process succeed and were more trusting (and eager to collaborate again). Meg’s own path of envisioning groups coming together had grown from her collaborative efforts with Rupert across 2 environmental fields, to a collaboration that involved all of the state’s environmental groups, to a third collaboration that was extending beyond the boundaries of the traditional environmental groups and touching upon those parts of other organizations that touched their agenda: finding a patch of common ground from which diverse groups could work to effect change at the community level.
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