Abstract
This chapter focuses on engaging communities and some of the key considerations to keep in mind with community-based system dynamics (CBSD). Engaging communities may happen at various times during the CBSD process, but a key theme through is that one is focused on building capacity within the community to actively participate and make informed decisions about a modeling process. The chapter describes two different types of exercises that are commonly used to introduce system dynamics concepts and group model building, the graphs over time script and the concept model script:
If the purpose is to solve the problem—then you don’t take the time to let people develop their own solutions. If the purpose is to solve the problem, there are a lot of ways solve the problem that are much simpler than going through all this education process. Solving the problem can’t be the goal of education. It can be the goal of organizations. That’s why I don’t think organizing and education are the same thing. Organizing implies that there’s a specific, limited goal that needs to be achieved, and the purpose is to achieve that goal. Now if that’s it, then the easiest way to get that done solves the problem. But if education is to be part of the process, then you may not actually get that problem solved, but you educate a lot of people. You have to make a choice.
Myles Horton (Horton and Freire 1990, 119)
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Notes
- 1.
Jim Braun, former CEO of Youth in Need, pointed out the importance of recognizing that gatekeepers, like the organizations they represent, are diverse and the different roles that gatekeepers can take in relation to marginalized or high-need communities.
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Hovmand, P.S. (2014). Engaging Communities. In: Community Based System Dynamics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8763-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8763-0_3
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