Always Listening and Learning
By Ky Lindberg, Vice President of Community Engagement
If we’ve met, you probably know that I bring my whole self to every aspect of my life – how I show up in my personal life is ever-present in my work in community building and health. Bringing together the sum of my life experiences, both professional and personal, is what helps me see the world through a lens of connection, and makes me a better colleague, partner, leader, and mother.
Similarly, I believe deeply that the only way to make change is if we all work together – which is how I view community engagement. It is something we do together. This belief is central to our identity at Georgia Health Initiative. When engaging with our community, we are acutely aware that though we may share the goal of making social change, the Initiative’s presence brings a power imbalance within the context of community collaboration.
That’s why we take care to curate an approach to community engagement that intentionally embodies togetherness, curiosity, and an openness to learn from our partners and stakeholders. This reflects how we internalize what “community” means to us. We honor the fact that we are not passive observers of the community but instead show up as active members of our community. We know that each and every one of us in Georgia inherently has varying levels of power, resources, and influence that can be leveraged to achieve health equity to improve opportunities to optimize health for all of us. We believe that we need to work together to tackle complex health issues, and at the same time, we know we are not experts in each community’s priorities, challenges, and strengths. Rather, we know that those closest to the issues we aspire to support must always be centered and that effective community engagement means we work alongside our community, ensuring that our contributions are additive and welcomed. It also means acknowledging that we aren’t always in the driver’s seat. Our community partners must sometimes drive – or at least hold the map and help navigate us in the right direction.
How did we come to this approach? We know that communities, just like the people in them, are complex. They have different needs at different times. We are always curious about who we are talking about when we talk about community – what defines a “community” and who decides what it needs? The people themselves should answer those questions.
For the Initiative to engage with our partners in a meaningful way, we must constantly listen and learn. From formal focus group research to attending and dialoguing at community gatherings or meetings, we value every opportunity to hear directly from our partners. This ongoing dialogue informs how we can best use our role as a bridge builder in Georgia to make positive and lasting change. Sometimes this means sharing stories from one community with another or bringing partners together to have a broader dialogue. In all ways that we engage, we rely on our partners to hold us accountable to our values of trust, equity, courageous leadership, and partnership.
We’ve learned a lot from our partners; we’ve been inspired by several sparks that light the way we approach community engagement as we continue this journey of curiosity and learning:
Spark 1: Showing up and listening can be transformative. There is value in the role we serve as conveners and bringing different stakeholders together to listen and learn. We recognize that there is a deep desire to listen to and learn from each other, and we believe in the power of bringing people together to make change. Over the past year, I’ve met many partners who share our goals of a healthier Georgia. I’ve been an attendee at community forums where I listened to partners and other experts talk about opportunities to improve access to care in rural areas of the state; and I’ve been the one at the front of the room in conversations about maternal health that the Initiative has convened.
Spark 2: Think about who is missing from the table. Including diverse perspectives in every conversation helps us understand needs and potential solutions, but sometimes we may not even know which are or who is missing. That’s why holding community conversations with people outside our usual network is crucial to our learning journey.
Spark 3: We can fund differently. How can we contribute to the work already happening in Georgia without duplicating efforts? We can rethink how we use our resources, including breaking down silos to ease collaboration between different stakeholders. The Initiative recently launched its Moment of Spark grant program, which funds innovative projects that not only respond to community needs, but are the result of the collective effort of many different stakeholders.
Like any relationship, community engagement is an ongoing journey, not a project with a deadline. As humans on this earth, we are always changing – communities will have different needs, there will be new challenges and opportunities, and there will be ever-evolving ways to serve each other.
Together with my colleagues at the Georgia Health Initiative, I am here to listen, learn, adapt and work together to realize a vision of a Georgia full of possibilities for all.
