Author: dsoulgen
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Longing to Belong: An Experiential Approach to Belonging
Everyone seems to be talking about loneliness and belonging these days.Maybe we are reaching some kind of collective realisation about how disconnected we have become – and how deeply many of us are searching for belonging.Perhaps. But I don’t want to jump onto a trend. I arrived at these questions through my own life, work…
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Children and Young People: Our Most Underutilised Community Asset?
What a walk through Parramatta reminded me about moving beyond identifying assets to connecting and mobilising them – and bringing places to life. At a recent workshop with Cormac Russell, hosted by Resourcing Inclusive Communities in Parramatta, we were invited to do something very simple. Leave the room. Walk through the neighbourhood. And notice the…
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What Kind of Facilitator Are You – Really
The more I do this work, the more I have come to see myself as a facilitator. A facilitator of people, teams, and communities through participatory, strengths-based, and relational processes. This week, as I train another group of Camp Venture facilitators – and as I prepare to head to Geelong for the Australasian Institute of…
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Building Social Cohesion the ABCD Way: Reflections from Culture Waves
At first glance, some people may not immediately connect social cohesion programs like Culture Waves with ABCD (Asset-Based Community Development). But for me, the links are very real. Perhaps because I have never experienced ABCD simply as a framework to preach or a workshop to deliver – but something to live and breathe through practice.…
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What Christchurch Can Teach Us About Participation, Place and the Power of Experimentation
At dinner last night after an AANZPA Executive meeting, Simon from Christchurch shared stories about a local initiative called Gap Filler – a creative urban regeneration social enterprise that emerged after the devastating earthquakes in Ōtautahi Christchurch. I found myself deeply moved listening to him speak.Not because everything succeeded. In fact, he said many experiments…
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Sustaining Place-Based Work – From good intentions to real impact
In a recent article, I explored place-based leadership as the practice that brings a place to life. By place-based work, I mean approaches that start with a particular community or locality – its people, relationships, strengths, history, challenges and possibilities – and bring people together to respond in ways that are grounded in that place…
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Place-Based Leadership: The Practice That Brings a Place to Life
🌱 Introduction There is a lot of strong thinking in the sector right now about place-based approaches, place strategies, social cohesion, participation, community development and systems change. Across policy and practice, the language of “place” is far more common than it was even a few years ago. The term place-based leadership is also already in…
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More Than a Building: Reflections from Deniliquin on recovery, participation, and doing things the right way
Sometimes, you travel to a town to scope the activation of a youth hub, and instead, you arrive in a community still in shock.When I arrived in Deniliquin for the first visit to explore the activation of a youth hub, the town was responding to the devastating fire that had severely damaged the local high…
Soulgen 