Community Change Institute

Equipping to Transform Your Community

Join over 200 community changemakers from across Canada, the United States, and beyond as we explore the shifting environment in which we work and volunteer.

Together we will explore the five interconnected practices essential for community change, hear from a wide range of content and context experts, and how to build leadership capacity in a shifting world.

You'll experience three 3.5 virtual sessions, spread out over 3 weeks, plus pre-event resources, coaching opportunities, and continued support.

One Institute - 365 days of learning, support, and encouragement.

As communities drive towards improving population level outcomes, we at the Tamarack Institute have learned that changemakers need to build their skills in five interconnected practice areas in order to make significant impact.

The Community Change Institute is designed to build your capacity across these practice areas. You'll attend a panel discussion on the five interconnected practices, and choose two practices to explore via in-depth workshops.

Interested in all five? We'll provide each attendee with the resources and slides for all five workshops as part of your registration.

Collective Impact

One of the biggest challenges facing community change leaders is impacting systems and policies to improve the well-being of citizens. In 2011, FSG in the United States defined an approach to large-scale, system-wide community change called Collective Impact. The Collective Impact idea provides a useful framework for community change and is situated within the broad frame of collaborative efforts focused on systems and policy change. Tamarack collaborates with colleagues in Canada, the United States and internationally to intentionally build the field of practice in Collective Impact and collaborative community change efforts.

Community Engagement

Community Engagement is the process by which citizens are engaged to work and learn together on behalf of their communities to create and realize bold visions for the future. We apply the theory to community contexts and teach and coach organizations, municipalities and groups to engage their communities meaningfully. We stress the importance of approaching engagement with an outcomes-based lens, of always involving context experts, and to provide community ownership of solutions whenever possible. We specialize in applying Community Engagement to systems-thinking in order to work collaboratively for community-wide change.

Collaborative Leadership

The premise of Collaborative Leadership says: If you bring the appropriate people together in constructive ways with good information, they will create authentic visions and strategies for addressing the shared concerns of the organization and community. When collaboration works, it reproduces and builds the characteristics of civic community, allowing us to deal with future issues in constructive ways. Collaboration builds social capital. Collaboration is the new leadership, and we work with communities and organizations to implement Collaborative Leadership processes to achieve impact.

Community Innovation

We see Community Innovation as a particular form of social innovation that is place-based, within the specific geography of a community. As dynamic ‘living labs’, communities offer the perfect container for innovation. Through our experience with community change, we have come to understand that to be effective, innovation requires an appreciation of both the issue one is hoping to address, as well as a deep understanding of the unique characteristics of the community – the place and the people within it – where the innovation will be implemented.

Victor Beausoleil

At the age of 24, Victor Beausoleil Co-Founded RedemptionReintegration Services one of the largest youth-led, youth justice agencies in Canada. In 2013 Victor Beausoleil received his first public service appointment by the Premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynne as a member of the PCYO (Premiere’sCouncil on Youth Opportunities). Victor has worked diligently in the broader equity seeking communities across Canada for the past nineteen years. As a lecturer Victor Beausoleil has travelled extensively throughout Canada, the United States, UK and Africa for speaking engagements for community organizations, institutions and philanthropic foundations.

Executive Director, SETSI

Marina Nuri

Marina Nuri is the Associate Director at the World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund - a binational philanthropic organization with a mission to support innovative solutions that help immigrants and refugees in the U.S. and Canada achieve their aspirations and thrive. She leads the Fund’s strategy and grantmaking in Canada. Prior to joining the Fund, Marina spent several years designing and managing international development programs across Africa. Before that, she spent eight years in management consulting with Accenture, advising both private sector and social impact organizations on strategy and operations. Marina has an MBA from the University of Oxford, Said Business School.

Associate Director, World Education Services Mariam Assefa Fund

Ana Gonzalez Guerrero

Ana is the Co-Founder and Managing Director at the Youth Climate Lab, a youth-for-youth lab dedicated to creating innovative projects for more ambitious climate action. Ana oversees internal operations as well as project management and strategic direction.Prior to her role, she led an Innovation Fund through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Partnership for Municipal Innovation in Local Economic Development, a small-scale granting mechanism for innovative solutions that benefit communities, with a focus on women and youth, across six countries. Ana has also worked closely with local level actors through the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program, supporting over 340 local governments in their efforts to take action on climate across Canada.

Co-Founder & Managing Director, Youth Climate Lab

Bill Fulton

Bill Fulton is the Executive Director of The Civic Canopy, a community-based nonprofit advancing a vision of equity by “creating the conditions where the many work as one for the good of all.” The Civic Canopy helps communities build their capacity to transform individual efforts into collective action focused on systemic change. He has over twenty years of experience in team development, collaborative problem solving, multi-stakeholder dialogue, and results-oriented systems change efforts. He received his BA in history at Brown University, MA in education at the University of Colorado at Denver, and PhD in religion and social change at the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology.

Executive Director, Civic Canopy

Liz Weaver

Liz is passionate about the power and potential of communities getting to impact on complex issues. Liz is Tamarack’s Co-CEO and leads Tamarack’s Learning Centre. In this role she provides strategic direction to both the Learning Centre and Tamarack while also advancing collaborative leadership, collective impact skills and strategies in communities across Canada, the US and Internationally.

Co-CEO & Strategic Lead, Learning Centre

Lisa Attygalle

Lisa works with cities and organizations to help them meaningfully engage their communities. Over the last six years her work has focused on creating authentic engagement strategies and training staff teams, teaching and writing about innovative engagement methodologies, designing and facilitating workshops with a focus on raising the voice of the context expert, integrated communications planning, and the use of technology and creativity for engagement.

Consulting Director, Community Engagement

Mark Cabaj

Mark’s current focus is on developing practical ways to understand, plan and evaluate efforts to address complex issues (e.g. neighbourhood renewal, poverty and homelessness, community safety, educational achievement and health). He has first-hand knowledge of using evaluation as a policy maker, philanthropist, and activist, and has played a big role in promoting the emerging practice of developmental evaluation in Canada.

President, From Here to There Consulting

Sonja Miokovic

Sonja is the Consulting Director of the Tamarack Institutes’s Community Innovation Area. She is a dynamic educator, social scientist, and innovator with over 16 years of experience in the sector. Having lived, worked, and played in over 80 countries, she has a broad spectrum of international experience that cuts across the public, privte and civil society sectors.

Consulting Director, Community Innovation

Community Change Institute
Equipping to Transform Your Community

200

Community Changemakers

10+

Thought Leaders

8

Panels & Workshops

Equipping to Transform Your Community