Kumu Map of New Community Paradigms Wiki

This blog post's purpose is to introduce the New Community Paradigms Wiki Map created with the Kumu relational mapping program. For more than five years, New Community Paradigms has been meandering meaningfully through a host of public, civil and community issues. It could be more truthfully called, "Explorations and Experiments in Discovering Potential Pathways to New Community Paradigms" (EEDPPNCP) but that seemed a bit long. It has been a means of interacting with new ideas of interest providing the opportunity to interact with some interesting people who propagate those interesting ideas. 

This blog has though been only one component of the journey, another is the New Community Paradigms (NCP) Wiki which serves as the storehouse for discovered online resources and created personal insights on these matters. Together, the blog and wiki are built upon concepts from the MITWorld video Media in Transition 6: New Media, Civic Media which put forward the idea (at 8:27) of “time-based” durable, static versus "space-based" ephemeral, dynamic in terms of storage and transmission. These were then blended with the ideas of Alex Bruns' in “Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage” page 102, of blogs being based on temporal organization, in which the most recent articles are placed in the most prominent position, making it difficult to serve as an in-depth platform for learning as contrasted with wikis, which implement a space-based structure seen as allowing both for deeper exploration of issues and an opportunity for greater collaboration. These differences are seen as being based on infrastructure versus interface. NCP attempts to combine these concepts together to create an expandable learning platform with some depth but still generally accessible. There isn't any claim of authority or correctness associated with the ideas gathered from either the blog or the wiki. Simply an offer to make them available so that they might be considered as to whether or not they could be beneficial. 

Through the explorations and experiments initiated by the NCP blog, the NCP wiki has grown encompassing a host of topics from Asset Based Community Development to Systems Thinking, many that were at first of little knowledge but one learns over time by engaging. The wiki is basically organized on a hierarchical basis, similar to the sections and chapters of a book. Wiki sections, involving broader concerns such as Economics, followed then by wiki chapters, composed of related wiki pages, such as Budgeting for Community Prosperity or Economic Growth and Equity respectively, extending to more inquiries leading to specific wiki focus pages such as B Corporations. 

It is within the designated wiki pages that the majority of the online resources are found. The other pages serve for the most part as organizational infrastructure for the wiki which has evolved over time. With each new exploration or experiment, new pathways have been forged and newly discovered relationships have altered the overall conceptual landscape. It becomes quickly obvious though that these relationships, particularly considered in total, become very difficult to visualize. Each wiki page is individually isolated and any connections to other concepts, within other wiki pages, are beyond the horizon of the page. 

Providing an expanding hierarchical landscape, however, was not sufficient. This form of organizing was too close to the institutional structures to which this effort was designed to find alternatives. An effort has been made then to discover and delineate relationships hidden by the standard organizational structures to assist in overcoming the conceptual silos often found in institutions. To this end, relationships between concepts that may not be seen as being directly subsumed under each other but still seen as being influential have been identified. 

Taking this approach a bit further, some new ideas or concepts were seen as being bridges between more traditional sectors found in most mainstream institutions. An endeavor has also been made to identify these bridges and new elements in a manner that makes clear their importance to the community rather than to the institution. 

Under this Kumu scenario, the New Community Paradigms Wiki is the territory and the New Community Paradigms Wiki Map, is obviously the map. The explanatory ability of this blog post is limited. The tour of the map provided below being in truth more seamless within the Kumu environment as each of the subsequent links would not open into new tabs. Another avenue for learning about the map is provided then through the New Community Paradigms Wiki Map Tour presentation in which nearly everything stays in one window.

An example of a wiki bridged connection is Participatory Budgeting which is seen as a bridge between economics and governance, more specifically in the wiki between Budgeting for Community Prosperity and the wiki focus on NCDD’s related resources under Governance through Community. Economic Growth and Equity is also seen as being related to the concept of Participatory Budgeting.  The Kumu mapped bridged connections of Participatory Budgeting are then graphically seen as a bridge between Budgeting for Community Prosperity and the wiki focus on NCDD under Governance through Community in the Main Wiki Map.

The map of the wiki is not designed to provide detailed information as does the wiki itself. Instead, it illustrates relationships across the entire wiki. It provides a different perspective allowing for the potential of new insights as suggested by the blog post, Sailing Complex and Wicked Seas with Icebergs (Systems Thinking) that latitude thinking is different from longitude thinking. It does though take some time to get familiar with this. 

In making the case that systems and systems thinking really are a thing that could be applied to these areas of change requires at the same time keeping true to the course with systems thinking principles. Both are needed, like using both longitude and latitude to keep a ship on course. Both are part of the same global grid but each is determined differently, together requiring new means of navigation. The danger is not in getting lost east and west or north and south but being either marooned by one's own limited perspective or being lost in a complex sea of interactions. A primary tool for navigating systems is the systems map. 

All of the different sections listed on the Front Page of the wiki can be found in the Main Wiki Map's narrative section (left side of the screen) under "Go to:", clicking on one of these sections will take you to a new map reflecting that particular section. The map section of the Main Wiki Map (right side of the screen) displays the major bridge connections between the primary concepts of the wiki. The specific elements (colored circles) comprising the Main Wiki Map and their relationships to each other are illustrated in the Wiki Bridges Map. Mousing over the bulleted elements of the narrative section of that map or any map will highlight that element within the map itself.

Each section, such as Places Map, when accessed from the narrative section of a map will open into its own map with both its specific and related elements being displayed in relation to each other. Mousing over the bulleted elements with the narrative section will again highlight the particular element within the map section.

With individual elements, such as Place as Social and Economic Engine, it can then be possible to see that element's relationship within other sections of the wiki, such as within Places, Economics or within the overall Wiki Bridges Pathways Map. It is also possible to open the actual wiki page using the provided URL link.

Relationships can be extended. Understanding  Participatory Budgeting and Microeconomics is seen as a bridge between Participatory Budgeting and Budgetary Discipline based on a premise that participatory budgeting should not be merely a wish list. Budgetary Discipline is also seen as being related to Homelessness - Seeking Solutions or being potentially related as more precise connections are yet to be made but a need for such a connection being seen as paramount for a community to be financially resilient and sustainable. 

Some connections are more constructed in nature. Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking has been a primary effort in finding pathways to new community paradigms serving as a bridge between Systems Thinking and (again) NCDD under Governance through Community. Other connections, such as under Asset Based Community Development, are more similar to hypotheses still being explored.

While the Wiki Bridges Map displays the elements and their relative positions, the Wiki Bridges Pathways Map is composed of wiki sectional bridges maps, such as the Places Wiki Bridges illustrating that section’s primary pathway of connections which in total extend across the entire wiki.

None of these pathways are set in stone nor is the relative position of concepts unalterable. They are also definitely not the only possible pathways. They are intended to serve as a means for coming up with new pathways to discover new ideas or relationships. All together, they may seem complex but starting from a single element one can hopefully begin to see undiscovered pathways for new community paradigms.

Budgeting for Community Prosperity requires a Clear View

The word austere has been thrown around in two recent posts, Governance through Community and Second look at Making Cities Work but there has been little discussion so far as to money or budgets.

Although budgets are important and in truth an essential evil, they are a function of institutions and not of communities.  Budgets are not evil in themselves but they often turn into the master of planning instead of a guide to planning.  They do serve an important function, particularly when developed and implemented with a philosophy of transparency as their basis.

One of the complexities facing communities today is that they not only have to worry about their own community's budget but the budgets of state and federal governments as well.  They also have to worry about the regional impacts of budgetary decisions which falls between the local and state levels.  There are reasons to justify this worry.  Not only do communities receive a good deal of funding from or through state and federal agencies, the budget decisions regarding intra-communities infrastructure and other expenditures made by state and federal agencies also impacts communities.  This is a two-edged sword and communities need to be careful in how they use these resources.  Some have not been and are paying the price.

All of this presumes though that the members of a particular community have decided to take the lead in self-governance which is at the heart of the new community paradigms movement.  This is more likely in Innovatitown than it is in Parochialville but even in Parochialville there could be a desire for greater transparency and insight into the budgets that have an impact on their community.  The New Community Paradigms wiki page Budgeting For Community Prosperity offers some resources, though so far resources directly related to community budgeting have not been included.

What can be found are resources offered by California Budget Project or CBP which engages in independent fiscal and policy analysis and public education with the goal of improving public policies affecting the economic and social well-being of low- and middle-income Californians. This organization could serve as a template for local communities developing protocols for greater public inclusion.

The CBP believes that information can help give voice to those who often go unheard in budget and policy debates. “Knowledge,” as the saying goes, “is power.” Since 1995, the CBP has worked to make the budget more understandable and to shed light on how budget and related policy decisions can affect the lives of low- and middle-income Californians.

The California Budget Project is also on Facebook.  The CBP has served as a resource for policymakers, advocates, community leaders, interested citizens, and the media since 1995.

Another organization working to bring greater transparency to California's government and budgetary processes is California Common Sense, a Stanford-based nonprofit using Silicon Valley technologies to open government finances to the public, engage citizens in data-driven discourse, and catalyze a grassroots movement for more effective and efficient governance.  


As with many of the resources provided through the New Community Paradigms wiki California Common Sense or CACS is also on Facebook.

CACS is the first organization in history to mine California's vast records and successfully construct an organizational mapping of the several thousand agencies, departments, councils, committees, branches, sections, divisions, and subdivisions—many of them redundant—within California's executive branch. This research base and user-friendly online map will enable CACS to create the clearest case for establishing better governance.

California Common Sense created a Transparency Beta for the City of San Francisco based on its Theory of Change.

Imagine a world in which ordinary citizens are invested in their governments and take ownership of them by virtue of actually knowing a) how government works and b) how their tax dollars are used for public services. We at CACS see that world vividly and are guided by the vision that solutions to major local and state problems will stem from the marriage of transparency and engagement. The innovative technologies we use open up government, expose its excesses, draw its shareholders-particularly young people-into the political process, and improve the efficacy of services on which citizens rely.

Perhaps some organization such as Code for America will create an app that will make it possible for smaller communities to set up Transparency Betas for their own budgets.  However, as important as budgetary transparency and appreciation of where the dollars are going may be, it is not as important as an understanding of where the dollars come from and how they get to where they need to be.   That will be the subject for the next post. 

New Community Paradigm Wiki Updates

The other component of New Community Paradigms or NCP, besides this blog, is the New Community Paradigms Wiki. The wiki though is updated on a more haphazard basis, often discoveries found when looking for something else but nonetheless providing markers for future explorations. NCP has a range of interests though focus is usually pretty narrow at any particular point in time. Below are a range of different additions and updates since the last time I did this. 

Project for Public Spaces - Placemaking for Communities has been given its own wiki-page under Project for Public Spaces, as part of Places, and expanded upon with Ten Strategies for Transforming Cities and Public Spaces through Placemaking, Agenda Spotlight: Placemaking and Health and Equity and Inclusion: Getting Down to the Heart of Placemaking. 

Healthy Cities California, along with the addition of Building Healthy Communities, Long Beach, was also provided its own wiki-page. Healthy Cities was updated with diversitydatakids.org.

New wiki-page Housing, and under it Homelessness - Seeking Solutions have been added as part of Livable Communities. The later includes the recent six part series on homelessness and the use of financial modeling to create viable programs. The former includes access to the Smart Growth America report Foot Traffic Ahead 2016 report which cautions that the high housing costs in communities threatens equity and must be addressed through “attainable housing programs.” Housing as a fundamental component of community, bridges to numerous other areas of concern. Community Place has added Revitalization Tools - Infill SCORE ROADMAP along with the recently added Revitalization Tools - Infill SCORE. 

A new addition was made to Community Arts with Hidden Voices which seeks to empower underrepresented populations to effectively tell their stories by engaging communities in dialogue and positive action. This is seen as being potentially connected to Community Place through the concept of Soul of a Community. Also included is A guide to Listening Matters | Community Organisers.

Place as Economic and Social Engine saw the addition of Urban3  and the Strong Towns Walmart Index. 

Community Governance was further broken down into Governance and Community Democracy and added Election Tools as well as the Local Government Commission which works to build livable communities and local leadership by connecting leaders via innovative programs and network opportunities, advancing policies through participation at the local and state level.

Under Community Ecology, the Environment wiki-page saw the addition of NAAEE | North American Association for Environmental Education. The Sustainability wiki-page saw the addition of Center for Neighborhood Technology. 

Transparency and Open Data in Governance has had a few updates, Open Government Partnership, Advancing Open and Citizen-Centered Government | whitehouse.gov and California piloting the first statewide open data portal, GreenGov.data.ca.gov , with data sets and results from the GreenGov Challenge, a code-a-thon built around sustainability data sets hosted on the pilot site. GovOps is now moving the open data portal to an open source platform (DKAN) to ensure the longevity of continuous efforts to make government more open and efficient.

Under Community Change Agencies, Organizational, Online and Technology Based was further delineated  into Business Oriented Organizational, Online and Technology Based adding Bloomberg Philanthropies, which focuses on five key areas for creating lasting change: public health, environment, education, government innovation, and arts & culture, along with the Unreasonable Institute, the SingularityHub, and Results for America featuring Moneyball for Government, a concept explained by the Bloomberg article, “How cities can ‘Moneyball’ government.”

The Organizational, Online and Technology Based wiki-page saw the addition of FII - Family Independence Initiative, a national nonprofit which leverages the power of information to illuminate and accelerate the initiative low-income families take to improve their lives. 

A brand new, perhaps new type, wiki-page New Economic Paradigms was created. Building for Sustainability, the Chicago Community Loan Fund was added to Community Financing. Under Participatory Budgeting was added Democratizing Tax Increment Financing Funds.pdf, PB-in-Schools-Guide.pdf  and PBinSchools - The Participatory Budgeting Project under Associated Documents, as well as a link to Public Spending, by the People.

Innovation in Governance saw the inclusion of Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation | The White House, which was actually discovered a year ago, just hadn’t gotten around to putting it into the wiki, still working to catch up.

Collective Impact Forum | Getting Started was added to the Collective Impact wiki-page. 

It was decided to put Poplus, an open federation of people and organizations from many different countries with the joint mission to share knowledge and technology that can help citizens under Community Tech Tools.

Policy Creation wiki-page was updated with Public Agenda Home Page and Take-Charge.org being placed under Common Good.

New Urban Mechanics was placed under Planning the Urban Landscape but it is of a different nature than the links that were provided before. 

The Los Angeles City GeoHub was added to Policy Decisions by the Numbers with an explanatory video instead of text. 

Kumu has become a primary tool of the New Community Paradigm effort and there is now a collection of Kumu videos through Vimeo under the System Thinking Associated Programs section of the System Thinking wiki-chapter. 

This wiki goes through continual re-organization, especially to look for bridges across different sectors so more updates are likely to show up in the hopefully not too distant future and these updates will likely be included in this blog's future explorations of new community paradigms.

The Story behind the Systems Practice Challenge

The last post started the Acumen sponsored Systemic Practice course connecting it back to the posts on the previously completed Financial Modeling for the Social Sector course. In these posts, systems thinking will take the lead.

The final post in the Financial Modeling series ended with developing an abstract financial model for the very real purpose of feeding the homeless. We reached a particularly abstract juncture as the focus was primarily on a still unrealized future.  

This post will take another look back, again quoting the systems thinking mantra for this blog, “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.” or a longer version “Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.” 

One reason models are wrong is they often don’t reflect continually changing on the ground or granular reality. Things in real life change, an RV that was to be donated for food delivery was used instead as a residence for two pregnant homeless women. Models are also wrong because they never fully reflect the entire set of systems involved. One system not examined until the end was the political one, or political reality. 

In January 2016, the mayor of Portland established a“safe sleeping” policy meaning that homeless, sleeping in a doorway, would not be woken up by authorities to be moved to another location. This has since been rescinded. The mayor had major sweeps done around town with 72 hours notice, expecting everyone to pack up and move on but without giving options where to go and sometimes taking everything they had. The supporting advocacy groups were extremely busy trying to find housing for hundreds of people or at least some place for them to pitch their tents and be safe.

Practical on the street, as well as the economic and empirical realities of the Financial Modeling course put a damper on unrealizable idealism and helped to add a focused, disciplined financial perspective. A general goal of systems thinking is to avoid so-called unintended consequences of the invariably bad type. Doing good, true good is not easy. We started though with a model and ended up with, while still wrong, a better model.

Striving towards economic growth and equity, through democratic processes such as participatory budgeting, still requires better economic understanding and a means of budgetary discipline. When Seattle youth voted through participatory budgeting to spend $300,000 out of a $700,000 budget, on programs to address homelessness, how closely was the manner in which the money was spent examined?

The term “Last Mile” used in the title of the project came from the public transportation sector concept that it is easier to get a thousand people from point A (Station) to point B  (Station) and back again than it is to get that same thousand people from point B to point B1, B2, B3, and so on for each individual destination. People may be willing to ride a bullet train or light rail but don’t because they can’t cover that last mile to their destination. 

Similarly, the unsheltered homeless often cannot cover the last mile to get to the food so the intention is to cover it for them but the difficulty of doing so is comparable to that of the public transportation challenge because of multiple changing sources and targets, a version of the Traveling Salesman Problem.  Perhaps invoking the use of apps for finding the most efficient routes. 

Creating a sustainable and scalable enterprise to feed unsheltered homeless proved itself to be embroiled in a number of complex operational systems, food distribution, transportation, and others. Multiple social systems were also operating, though often not meshing together well, a system (weak social community) of homelessness within the community, a system of economics creating homelessness (perhaps as an unintended consequence but nonetheless), an institutional system to address different detrimental aspects of homelessness, and systems of existence among the homeless (social complex) in interacting with those community and institutional systems. 

The specific challenge was delivering food to those that were not only without means of sustainable nutrition but also without minimally decent, proper shelter of any type. There is an institutional system for food provision for those less fortunate, a primary source of which is systemic food wastage, a problem in its own right. One early idea was to develop apps like Cerplus, OkCupid, Leftover Swap and Spoiler Alert, which was built by MIT graduate students, to address food distribution challenges.

“Food waste happens not because businesses intend to waste the food but because they’re often disconnected from one another and lack a real-time solution,” says Ricky Ashenfelter, co-founder, and CEO of Spoiler Alert.

"It takes so much planning," said Al Brislain, CEO of Feeding America San Diego. "All the routes, all the-- you know, making sure the temperature is right, making sure that the food is still nutritious and fresh.”

Tax legislation in 2016 allowed business to benefit by getting tax deductions for donating food thereby hopefully preventing food waste. Inefficient solutions do little though to address the underlying causes of massive food wastage in the food and service industry which is said to happen because of consumer demand for price competition, depending upon massive overproduction to remain profitable.  Most programs do nothing to address this. Instead, they help to maintain overproduction through tax incentives created specifically to make surplus supermarkets viable. This food does not, however, readily reach the homeless.

Although the community food distribution system is available to the homeless, it is not necessarily accessible to them. Local pantries might bend over backward for a person with no address. 

“But that homeless person has to figure out a way to get the groceries back to camp or shelter and the street person is limited to what he can carry on a daily basis. It is very limited what kind of healthy ‘walking food’ the pantries carry”. - Jo

Besides a lack of choices, there is an inability to keep food fresh once it is distributed because it is given in quantities too large to be used in a timely enough manner. 

“They don't have much choice in food so they end up with five loaves of bread that go bad before they can use it.” - Jo

Overall, the most financially effective and sustainable remedy to address homelessness is providing homes rather than continually providing services which while necessary in the short run do not make a significant enough of an impact to bring about the needed change in the long run. The last post cited the study coming out of Calhoun County, Michigan, 

“The most ironic obstacle to implementing the fundamental solution was the community’s very success in providing temporary shelters and supports.”

Salt Lake City also started a project to provide housing for every homeless person.

However, while building homes may be one of the best remedies for homelessness, lack of a home is not, it was proposed, the primary etiology of the detrimental and acute afflictions of homelessness. It is a lack of community, separation from deeply structured community or social relationship network that can be defined as civil society. 

Such a social structure can be taken for granted by most of us because we can make decisions to bypass such relationships but remain, even if only subconsciously, confident that they will be available if we need them. Including those community relationships that we forge through our economic transactions. While this does not encompass the whole truth of homelessness and as a model is wrong, it might provide an important insight.

While it is obviously good that a beneficial social effort is sustainable that does not lessen any immediate needs. The question of scaling to assist more people does not make current local efforts to meet such needs unhelpful. The financial model helped to prevent wasting resources on enterprises if unviable and to expand them if viable.

Extending services to help different organizations find people that might be helped further, moving individuals from the streets and camps to supportive, permanent housing options and back into the community was considered. A larger question then was whether this more focused approach would make a long-term difference for only some of the homeless or would a far less focused approach help more people if only temporarily.

Economic Growth and Equity within a Community - Benefiting the 100%

In the last post, we talked about Budgeting For Community Prosperity (wiki page), putting forward the idea that budgeting for community prosperity requires transparency as one means of addressing the upcoming period of austerity in which most communities will find themselves. Important though as budgetary transparency is, just as important is understanding where the dollars come from, where they are going and how they are used.

Within the creation of a community, beyond the individual accumulation of wealth by individuals, families, organizations or businesses there is also an emergent community wealth.

This is not a socialistic notion that is being put forward as it is not owned or directed by or derived from or generated by government. It is the community working together through the efforts of individuals, families, organizations and businesses that creates a community's wealth.  Local government can take steps to encourage its development and taps into it for municipal revenue.

More will be said of this concept in a future post but the benefits of a community's wealth should be made to benefit to the greatest extent possible all members of that community.

We are now speaking of the impacts of Economic Growth and Equity (wiki page) by a community and within a community. This is not a 1% versus 99% issue. The 1% does not live in the same communities as the 99%. People can choose their own brand of politics and economics for their families which in aggregate will define the community but within any community that one calls home it should be the 100% that is considered when making decisions for the community as a whole.

Under the post Governance through Community we spoke of factions within a community potentially being marginalized. The budget process is one way by which this can happen. A new community paradigm approach to public policy at the local level would hopefully be able to overcome this practice put forward by an incumbent political processes.

There are two levels were this could happen. First, at the level of broad policy based issues of employment, fiscal policy or environment among others that impact communities not only at a regional and state level but also at the national and global level. This adds to the complexity of issues with which a community must deal.

One relevant resource for these types of discussions is The Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution.

The Hamilton Project seeks to advance America’s promise of opportunity, prosperity, and growth. The Project’s economic strategy reflects a judgment that long-term prosperity is best achieved by fostering economic growth and broad participation in that growth, by enhancing individual economic security, and by embracing a role for effective government in making needed public investments. We believe that today’s increasingly competitive global economy requires public policy ideas commensurate with the challenges of the 21st Century.

Another institution concerned with Economic Growth and Equality is the Center for American Progress.

The Center for American Progress held a forum on economic growth and equality. After opening remarks from Vanessa Cárdenas and Angela Glover Blackwell, members of the first panel talked about the link between economic growth and equality. Economist Emmanuel Saez in his presentation used graphs to show the relationship between equitable distribution of wealth and economic growth.

There are, to be fair, other organizations out there with the same focus but a different political perspective. These organizations though take a more community based approach in line with the thinking of this blog.

An organization with a focused on-the-ground concern regarding the question of community benefit for all members through Equity In Public Funds is the Advancement Project California. This approach works more directly with the concept of community paradigms.

Our goal is to provide public finance data, tools and training to local community-based organizations to strengthen their public interest and organizing campaigns. Equity in Public Funds partners with and increases the ability of community-based organizations to produce analyses of City and County fiscal inequities and advocate for reform.

This is the same organization behind Healthy City (wiki page). The Advancement Project offers Following the Money EPF.pdf as a tool to address concerns of budgetary transparency raised here and the last post by providing information on:

• How to read a city budget, 
• Where to find other key information that is not included in the budget, and 
• When and how to influence the city budget. 

While the document deals specifically with the City of Los Angeles budget there are still lessons that can be learned.

Evaluation through Logic Models versus Theory of Change with ABCDE

Now that a larger framework has been created in the last post for Wendy McCaig’s conversation concerning perspectives on evaluation, we can take a more direct look at Measuring Success in ABCD – Continued. We will be working with Kumu relational mapping again, so I will be explaining a few things along the way since it has been awhile and for some readers, this could be the first time. 

The  CDCD Asset Mapping Process graphic Wendy provided has been re-created, and displayed on the right-hand side, of the interactive Kumu map CDCD, Citizen-Driven Community Defined. 

Also available is an interactive Kumu version of the Approaches to Poverty Map that Wendy provided in her blog post, 3 Approaches to Poverty: Relief, Betterment, Development. Wendy's original maps are also available within the narrative section of the Kumu map by clicking on the underlined link. A lightbox will be revealed on top of the screen. As explained in the Kumu map narrative section, the lightbox is closed by clicking the X at the top right corner. Other maps will be provided separately in this post but are also included in the narrative section of the Kumu map CDCD, Citizen-Driven Community Defined or in other related maps. 

Within the narrative section of each Kumu map, if you mouse over dotted underlined text then that element will be highlighted in the related map. Click the underlined text and the narrative for that element to open up. Click the map's white area and the narrative and map will reset. In the Kumu environment, the maps stay in one window. 

There are differences with the interactive Kumu versions of the maps and Wendy’s graphics. The Kumu CDCD Asset Map includes the social concerns that the community initiatives are supposed to address. Wendy’s map displays multiple Resident Led Initiatives for each Action Team. The Kumu map only reflects a particular initiative for each neighborhood, each of which addresses a particular community concern related to kids’ safety.  

The Kumu Approaches to Poverty map has both the Poverty Alleviation component and the Wealth Creation component but are displayed as separate circles. The Spiritual Need element is placed between these two. 

The Social Problems and Community Focus of Wendy’s article is on kids’ safety within an environment besieged by gun violence, sexual predators and unsafe streets made all the more dangerous because the kids don’t have anywhere else to play. Each Neighborhood Initiative addresses one of these concerns.

The intention is to dynamically integrate the CDCD map and Approaches to Poverty map together to begin to answer the five community questions posed by Nurture Development.  

 1. What are the things that only residents/citizens can do in response to this issue?

 2. What are the things that residents/citizens can lead on and achieve with the support of institutions (governmental, nongovernmental, for profit) in response to this issue?

 3 What are the things that only institutions can do for us?

 4 What are the things that institutions can stop doing which would create space for resident action?

 5 What can institutions start offering beyond the services that they currently offer to support resident/citizen action?

In addition, there is the inclusion of three possible Paths of Influence found at the bottom of the Kumu Approaches to Poverty narrative. Again, mousing over each of the dotted underlined paths reveals that path within the map area to the right. Clicking on one of them will open the narrative and reveal the elements involved in that path while clicking on the map white space will take you back. 

The idea for the paths of influence is based on the ABCD theme of “From what's wrong to what's strong.” The Social Emotional Needs of one person could be seen as a deficit but addressed in the aggregate by connected others towards any one person's needs or a group's needs or everyone else’s needs, especially if combined with the communal addressing of Spiritual Needs becomes a strength. 

Under Influence Path 1, the journey is a politically oriented one in which the community attempts to influence the government institution.  Under Influence Path 3, the journey is more of one of partnership in which the community needs to work both with the government institution and on its own at the same time. It is still possible though for the community to take Influence Path 2 in which the community takes action on its own though as reflected in the actions of Better Block and its provision of open source placemaking, it can sometimes be a matter of asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

Two of the Neighborhood Initiatives are seen as primarily addressing Social Emotional Needs. Showing the kids that the community cares for them. At their current degree of interaction, though these community actions through specific members fit 1. What are the things that only residents/citizens can (or would) do in response to this issue? To what degree they address other needs are questions that would still need to be asked. 

Resident Led Initiative 3, takes place in Neighborhood C. In this case, it is very likely that the possible choices invoked are “(2) What are the things that residents/citizens can lead on and achieve with the support of institutions (governmental, nongovernmental, for profit) in response to this issue?”, or “(3) What are the things that only institutions can do for us?”, to resolve physical safety needs or fulfill environmental needs related to health and welfare such as parks. In such circumstances, the community needs to go beyond providing only social-emotional support. Circumstances will dictate which of the paths of influence or others the community decides to take. 

It might be possible to expand programs such as the Cocoa Station under skill 2 to environment 3 and others to help create a more pedestrian-friendly environment. Additional skills could be added to each neighborhood and more detailed understanding of each environment and applicable social concerns could be provided. 

None of this has, however, reached a point of evaluation. Not only evaluating the individual projects put out by the community but also evaluating the means by which the community puts out such projects and implements them. In the last post, Cormac Russell provided a number of different evaluation methods, Developmental Evaluation, Most Significant Change, Narrative Therapy and Marshall Ganz's work (pdf) on Public Narrative moving to a Theory of Change and on to a Theory of Practice, all  beyond the standard Logic Model’s limitations that concerned Wendy.  Part of the reason that they are more comprehensive is that they are initiated when the project or program is beginning or even prior, question assumptions and extent even beyond completion.

Marshall Ganz's work (pdf) could be especially relevant to the paths of influence getting people to tell their stories in a manner that creates community cohesion thereby focusing community resolve. This post and the related Kumu map will focus on a Theory of Change, specifically as envisioned by Acumen. The example provided is based on the Last Mile Food Truck project proposed in the Financial Modeling and Last Mile Homeless Food Truck blog post series. A second Acumen course was taken on social impact using the first course as a foundation. The Acumen Theory of Change involves considering one’s assumptions at each step of the process and acquiring evidence to support one’s conclusion. There are also other questions to be considered and a recognition of possible pitfalls.  

The example provided is specific but it needs to be remembered that it is also hypothetical. The blog series was on the Acumen Financial Modeling course involved far more than financial accounting considerations including the systemic difficulties inherent in implementing such projects. The financial models proposed were though fantasy finance or imaginary impact investing as is the concept of social impact here. The full extent of lessons learned has of yet to be determined and revealed, so further inquiries can be expected in the future.

The more relevant question is how this could be related to the three neighborhood initiatives and the particular paths of influence they might take. Were some of the solutions proposed low hanging fruit or could more ambitious projects be developed by the community with our without the assistance of government or non-profit institutions? Assistance would not necessarily have to be directly related to specific projects, it could be related to how the community approaches change through processes such as placemaking with the Project for Public Places or participatory budgeting through the Participatory Budgeting Project or other means of greater community. The relevance of the mapping process is not the completed maps but the process of the community expanding and enhancing its efforts at community empowerment.