Professional Community Creation; Sustainability Services
Professional Communities are a cornerstone of Kaizen’s continued support for local organizations long after direct involvement in donor assistance projects ends. Primarily supporting locally-driven institutional reforms, Professional Communities extend the breadth, depth, and type of donor assistance to local professionals who rarely have any choice, or voice, in the support they receive. Professional Communities leverage more traditional assistance initiatives and employ external reform resources (often from non-traditional donor assistance providers), adapting them to be easily accessed, understood, and applied by local professionals. Communities also serve as forums for professionals to support each other through the transfer of ideas, experiences, and expertise. Direct assistance to each community is complemented by an interactive web-site that serves as an additional meeting place for collaboration, a consolidator of each community’s collective intelligence, and a provider of additional resources and expertise.
Professional Communities thus consist of live and virtual activities, events, and assistance: Live community events include Quarterly Community Meetings. These regular forums bring community members together to fortify personal relationships, discuss best practices, hear from top local and international experts, and learn about newly available resources and tools. Community sub-groups meet separately in Executive Round Tables to learn about and apply niche topics of interest. Virtual (web) assistance makes numerous best practice templates, presentations, newsletters, case studies, and other resources available to community members to download and use. Where appropriate, they also often create an interactive on-line community where members can come together and learn from each other as well as outside experts. Community members drive the technical direction of each community themselves, often through on-line surveys and polls, and additional technical support is tailored to the demands of community members accordingly.
Professional Communities empower and advise prospective reformers. They provide reformers with the understanding of best-practices, the motivation to affect change, and the means to do so. Members commit to contribute as well as to take from the communities in which they participate. Traditional development ‘recipients’ also become providers. 'Providers' also become recipients of locally driven requests for support. Communities, in effect, blur the line separating the two. Management of thriving communities is ultimately transferred to a local organization chosen by community members themselves. Through our ongoing support portal KaizenConnect www.kaizenconnect.org. The Kaizen Company continues to support each community with up-to-date, evolving best practice tools and resources as long as the community exists. Kaizen’s continued assistance is independent of any further donor support.
