Coaching
The CPL provides coaching services to community partners, offering guidance developed from research-based strategies and best practices. Coaching support has included ongoing consultation, leadership of workshops, and development of training. Schedule a meeting with Dr. Ryan Lavalley to discuss coaching and consultation opportunities with the CPL.
Ongoing Consultation
The CPL offers long-term consultation support to community partners on an ongoing basis. Our team members are often on steering committees and boards and offer regular check-ins as programs develop. In these partnerships, the CPL supports partners’ initiatives and provides expertise to help partners more fully achieve their mission and goals.
HOPE NC Steering Committee
CPL Primary Lead Dr. Ryan Lavalley serves on HOPE NC‘s steering committee. Ryan provides aging-related consultation to HOPE NC, particularly around its IDEAL Communities Collective Impact project. The project aims to create a wide array of inclusive, affordable, and easily accessible housing options for people who experience disability and older adults.
Consultation for HOPE NC extends beyond the steering committee: the CPL team also supports HOPE NC in communicating its strategic initiatives to stakeholders and partners. For example, CPL Community Program Specialist Kevin Giff presented “IDEAL communities: Bringing stakeholders together to create inclusive communities” at the HOPE NC 2023 Inclusive Housing Summit.
MCJC Community Aging Consulting
CPL Primary Lead Dr. Ryan Lavalley provides community aging consultation to the Marian Cheek Jackson Center. The Jackson Center is a hub of creative action dedicated to preserving the future of historically Black neighborhoods in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, N.C. Ryan consults on initiatives related to community aging, including residential engagement programs, programs to help residents age in place, and programs that facilitate intergenerational connection and education.
Workshops & Training
The CPL adds capacity by training organizations in research-backed best practices for community partnership. Past trainings and workshops have included database development, community engagement research methods, coalition approaches, and more. The CPL team contributes an occupational science perspective, highlighting how we can understand and mobilize everyday living of people in their context. CPL-led trainings and workshops are tailored to our community partners’ specific goals, needs, and processes.
Orange Habitat Annual Staff Summit
The CPL team facilitated organization-wide planning around community engagement and empowerment at Habitat for Humanity of Orange County‘s 2023 annual summit. The day-long workshop 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.
Using activity-based teaching strategies, the CPL team led participants through activities that paralleled stages of developing community, building social cohesion, and learning from Habitat’s past community engagement efforts. Participants concluded the day by planning concrete organizational actions informed by mapping power structures within Habitat organizational processes.
Data Workshop
The CPL has trained organizations and teams on data collection and analysis, as well as how to leverage evaluation data to increase collaboration from organizational and gubernatorial partners.
For example, CPL Community Engagement Fellow Leiha Edmonds led a workshop for the Orange County Master Aging Plan‘s Community Supports and Health Services Workgroup. The workshop focused on opportunities to set clear goals and track progress on the cross county multi-partner plan, including ways to use data to measure success and increase collaboration to support a more age-friendly region.
Database Development Training
The CPL offers trainings to support database development, informed by the CPL’s experience creating and coordinating databases for the Orange County Home Preservation Coalition (OCHPC) and the Carolina Aging Network (CAN).
For example, Asheville Habitat reached out to the CPL to explore the development of a collaborative database and community organization network, modeled after the OCHPC. The CPL team worked with the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity in a day-long workshop to support their developing home repair collaborative. Workshop participants mapped out partnership roles, explored questions of access and marginalization, and built infrastructure for a home repair network database.
Guest Lectures
The CPL team and its partners are often invited as guest lecturers for university classes learning about ethical and reciprocal community-engaged work.
For example, CPL Primary Lead Dr. Ryan Lavalley guest lectures annually for the University of Missouri’s Populations and Communities course. The course introduces more than 50 first-year occupational therapy (OTD) doctoral students and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) undergraduate students to community practice. As guest lecturer, Ryan provides the overarching framework of community occupational therapy practice. Ryan also shares examples and best practices for engaging communities, groups, and occupation, informed by the CPL’s partnerships and work.
Coalition Approach Training
The CPL team has been asked to offer trainings on coalition-building. Informed by our experience administering the Orange County Home Preservation Coalition (OCHPC) and the Carolina Aging Network (CAN), we share our coalition approach and lessons learned.
For example, CPL Primary Lead Dr. Ryan Lavalley and CPL Doctoral Fellow Leiha Edmonds presented a national webinar for the Administration of Community Living (ACL)’s Housing and Services Resource Center. The CPL team offered best practices and resources for home accessibility partnerships, drawing on the OCHPC as a model. The webinar detailed how participants across the country can use home modification action guides to build and sustain cross-sector partnerships, as well as integrate collaborations into existing organizational operations. The webinar also guided participants in evaluating program impact and using data to make the case for increased funding and expansion of services.
The OCHPC is also featured in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s action guide, “Partnering to Expand Access to Home Modifications, Repairs, and Weatherization for Community Living.” This national resource features the OCHPC as a model of home accessibility collaboration.
Community Consultation
The CPL has served as a community consultant for Habitat for Humanity of Orange County‘s community engagement efforts across several years. CPL Community Program Specialist Kevin Giff presented about this longstanding partnership alongside Laine Staton, vice president of homeowner services for Habitat for Humanity of Orange County, at Habitat for Humanity International’s biannual conference in Atlanta in March. The conference hosted Habitat affiliates from around the world to learn, collaborate, and exchange best practices. Kevin and Laine’s presentation was titled “Integrating Community Development and Engagement into the DNA of Your Affiliate.” The presentation shared insights on community engagement process that CPL and Habitat Orange have developed. Kevin and Laine also discussed actions that other affiliates can take to improve or expand community engagement in organizational practices.
Community-Engaged Research Methods
The CPL team coaches community and academic colleagues in community-engaged research methods. The CPL shares knowledge informed by its own community engagement work and research through organizational trainings, community convenings, and academic conferences.
For example, CPL Primary Lead Dr. Ryan Lavalley, CPL Community Engagement Fellow Sayoko Kawabata, and CPL Affiliate Dr. Jenny Womack presented a panel at the Society for the Study of Occupation, USA (SSO:USA) 2023 annual conference. The panel, titled “Oral Histories: Advancing Research in Occupational Science,” explored oral histories as a method for studying community occupation. The panel included examples grounded in community experience, including collecting oral histories in Fairview to inform community engagement and programming; centering of community oral histories and goals in the Marian Cheek Jackson Center‘s mission and work; and development of Habitat for Humanity of Orange County’s Crescent Magnolia to address community-expressed needs for affordable housing for older adults.