Catalyzing Community Change with Mark Cabaj and Liz Weaver

ICFW Podcast - Overloaded: Understanding Neglect – Season 2

Show Notes: Catalyzing Community Change - Episode 2 - with Liz Weaver and Mark Cabaj

Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):

Host: Luke Waldo

Experts:

• Liz Weaver – Co-CEO, Tamarack Institute
• Mark Cabaj – Founder and President, Here to There

:00-:08 – Mark Cabaj – “Programmatic interventions help people beat the odds. Systemic interventions change their odds.”

:09-5:17 – Luke Waldo – Introduction to Collective Impact and Field Catalyst 

• Winning the War on Poverty
• Vibrant Communities Ending Poverty

5:18-6:27 – Liz Weaver – Community is at the center of everything in my career.

• Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction

6:28-8:02 – Mark Cabaj – “Programmatic interventions help people beat the odds. Systemic interventions change their odds.”

• Sustainable Livelihoods Framework

8:03-8:53 – Luke – What role does Tamarack play in an initiative like Vibrant Communities Ending Poverty?

8:54-12:49 – Liz – Collective Impact: Context matters. Relationships and ambition within communities to make changes to complex problems like poverty matter. Developed a learning community within 12 communities. Process of reflection to develop a poverty matrix to understand the depth and experience of those living in poverty in a learning community.

• Opportunities 2000
• Building Youth Futures
• Climate Transitions

12:50-13:43 - Luke – Taking lessons learned and frameworks from previous efforts like Vibrant Communities Ending Poverty to drive new efforts to address complex issues like climate change. What role does Here to There play in community change efforts?

13:44-17:57 – Mark – Why is clear, but how is not. Scaling. How do we take all this complexity and put it into a 10-year plan? 

“Plan the work, then work the plan.” Learning by doing. Align distinct actors. 

Michael Quinn Patton: “Traditional evaluation can be the enemy of social innovation and change.” Introduced us to Developmental Evaluation, real-time feedback to affirm your direction or change it.

• Developmental Evaluation - Michael Quinn Patton

17:58-19:06 - Luke – Putting a pin in the Developmental Evaluation conversation to revisit the challenge of meeting the urgency of the moment while also being able to take the time to evaluate what is working and what is not. 

19:07-20:53 - Luke – How do we translate Collective Impact 2.0 and Lived Experience into more approachable language?

20:54-28:56 - Liz – How do we engage the people that are closest to the problems, and authentically hear the barriers and systems they have to navigate? In the Hamilton roundtable, they learned that for anyone receiving financial benefits, there were “982 rules that regulated your life.” “That’s a lot of rules to get a little money.” 

Communities Building Youth Fut