The Community Practice Lab (CPL) facilitated organization-wide planning around community engagement and empowerment at Habitat for Humanity of Orange County‘s 2023 annual summit. The day-long workshop, led by Dr. Ryan Lavalley and CPL’s Community Engagement Team, guided Habitat staff in considering and planning for strategic actions to support local communities in building a sense of community, coordinating social cohesion, and engaging in collective action, all rooted in resident leadership.
Habitat is a nonprofit organization that helps families build and improve places to call home. The CPL has a longstanding partnership with Habitat in support of its efforts to better engage Orange County residents, support community-led initiatives, meet community needs, and facilitate collaboration and connection.
“Habitat is committed to engaging and amplifying community-led initiatives as it works to support Orange County community needs,” said Sayoko Kawabata, one of CPL’s community engagement leads. “The CPL has been thrilled to partner with Habitat over the past several years to support projects ranging from collecting oral histories, revitalizing a neighborhood community center, strategic planning, and more. It has been an inspiring learning journey for me, too.”
To structure the planning workshop, the CPL team leveraged the Habitat for Humanity International Quality of Life Framework and used activity-based teaching strategies to consider local community issues. Kawabata and Kevin Giff, CPL community program implementation specialist, co-led participants through activities that paralleled stages of developing community, building social cohesion, and learning from Habitat’s past community engagement efforts.
“The Community Practice Lab did an outstanding job designing and leading professional development for our staff summit. The activities were highly engaging for our staff and the team did a fantastic job facilitating conversations around Orange Habitat’s approach to community engagement,” said Laine Staton, vice president of homeowner services.
Participants concluded the day by planning concrete organizational actions informed by mapping power structures within Habitat organizational processes.
“Community work is so often tempted to remove agency from community leaders who have long had experience and resilience in caring for their own communities,” said Lavalley, CPL primary lead. “We focused our final action planning through a power lens so that we could concretely look at where resident leaders were making decisions in Habitat processes and where their leadership could be further amplified.”
