Discussion of Community of Practice as it might be used with an environmentally focused NGO.

1. Communities of Practice
Community Ecology Institute
Initial Discussion
Chiara D’Amore, CEI E.D.
Dave Baldwin
Jim Loving
6/22/2023
Fostering social and ecological health and well-being.

2. What Are Communities of Practice?
A Group of People who share a concern or a passion for
something they do and learn how to do it better as they
regularly interact. CoPs are Social Learning groups engaged
in collective learning in a shared domain of human
endeavor. *
• Wenger-Traynor Consulting

3. What Are Communities of Practice?, Cont.
1- The Domain – Curation of the Group – rules and definitions for a shared
area of interest. Must be active practitioners contributing current, lived experiences that are
relevant and valuable to others.
2- Community/Create Space one to one interactions between a trusted group of
practitioners in a physical or virtual space where participants feel safe, welcomed and
productive and can focus, relax and trust each other. Community can take many different forms and
varies according to the subject. Some community-making activities include:
- Face-to-face meetings; Social media group; Discussions; Webinars/Zoom meetings; Group activities;
Shared Knowledge Base of Practices.
3- Practice colleagues in a CoP need to be practitioners in their domain. What does this
mean? Simply put, members of the community of practice work towards a shared goal of
learning how to do things better and further their knowledge. They generate ideas and resources
aimed at improving their knowledge within the domain.

4. What Are Communities of Practice?, Cont.
4- Manage Knowledge– CoP share knowledge through personal storytelling, based on
real-life experience. Members share mistakes, successes and learnings, contemplate new ideas
and solve problems together. They become walking, talking repositories of knowledge and best
practice which they share and apply in their extended networks or workplaces. A Knowledge
Management Repository can retain these stories and lessons learned.
5- Governance - Determine a collaborative governance method based on effective
organization, central or distributed authority, and inclusive decision-making.to make shared
decisions.
6- Take Care of Participants - A CoP can become emotional. So listen to what’s
going on, bring refreshments and empathize with the group. Put the same level of love and care
into the curation of events as you want people to show in their participation at them. The key is
to make sure the ground rules are set to encourage positive, constructive information sharing.
Strive for appreciative inquiry.

5. Some starting questions to help reveal our powers to act
Purpose
Networks
Governance
Ownership
Finance
What is a community group, initiative, project or organisation’s purpose? Why does it
exist? What about the other organisations that provision for your communities’ needs?
How are these groups, initiatives and organisations networked? What relationships does
the organisation hold, and how does it bring to live its purpose and values through them?
How are these entities governed? Who has voice in decision making? What are the metrics
of success? What are the hard rules, and unwritten culture, of how things are done?
How are they owned? What are the essential assets that provision for your communities’
needs? Who owns, controls or has access to them? What laws uphold these?
How are these entities financed? What is that finance expecting and demanding? What
is extracted and to where? What is reinvested into the community?
* in the context of Doughnut Economics in action

6. What do we mean by ‘communities’? *
6
Connecting and learning with
people applying the ideas in all
sorts of places and contexts
Learning about the
ideas & taking action
in your life & home
Connecting with others over
wider scales to work towards
deeper systemic change
Connecting and
taking action with
neighbours locally
Street Global
Household
Town,
City
Region,
Nation
Neighbourhood
* in the context of Doughnut Economics in action
Like-minded Practitioners

7. Imagination Sundial
Rob Shorter, Communities
and Art Lead, DEAL & Rob
Hopkins, Transition Network
& What If to What Is.
Imagination
→Ideation
→Innovation
→Collaboration
→New Approaches

8. Next Steps for CEI
1- Decide if CoP is good fit for CEI – i.e. Why Start COPs?
2- Decide Practice Areas - e.g. Nourishing Gardens; Experiential Learning
for Home Schooled K-12; Green Internship Best Practices; other.
3- Approach potential Practice Partners determining interest
4- Decide on Governance, and technology for group for knowledge base
and collaboration in person or virtually – e.g. VR/XR or A.I.,
Collaboration tool – e.g. Hylo, What’sApp, Signal, Telegram, MS Teams,
Circles.
5- Assess whether the groups, if formed, can benefit from CoP training –
e.g. see Wegner-Traynor workshops.

9. Potential CoP Partners – Sample List
Great Kids Farm, Catonsville MD
The Farm at Our House, Brookville MD
- WAPO article
- Manna Food Center, Silver Spring MD
Heart Beet Gardening, (Jad Wenger)
Earth Regenerators Global
Lift Economy, Impact Consulting
UMD Agriculture School and Extension
UMD Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability
Jubilee Climate Farm, part of the New Community
Project, with Vine & Fig Tom Benevento Harrisonburg, VA
Ned Tilman
Howard County Conservancy
Other MD-based environmental NGOs

10. Additional Information
Social Change Network
Thinkific
Open Source
Marc Jotter microcredentials on Medium
Harvard Business Review
Wenger-Traynor Consulting

11. Imagination and Innovation via Collaboration
Using and Exploiting Artificial Intelligence to further Imagination
HBR – Imagination needed now more than ever
Martin Reeves – How to Spark Imagination
Imagination and Innovation are required for Entrepreneurship
Imagination is Key for Innovation and Well Being
An Imaginative Collaborative Framework
ImaginiariumXR – a vision for a Community Ideation space for Building
Regenerative Communities – Dave Baldwin