OneRouge Community Check-In - Week 111

Week #111

The focus of the morning conversation will be solutions-based approaches to systemic challenges in in the Capital Region through 'Collective Action & Impact' with featured speakers.

Followed by OneRouge Community Networking Lunch at Noon at the River Center Library to celebrate The Walls Project 10th Anniversary Kickoff event.

• A great opportunity to meet your fellow change agents, business owners, artists, educators, faith leaders and municipal leaders from across the city.

• After lunch the Walls invites you to celebrate a decade of impact with with a special toast by Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome and the unveiling of our 3-Year Strategic Plan from 1-2pm.

No admission fee and ALL are welcome!

Quick Links: Notes, Zoom Chat, Community Announcements

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Speaker Notes

Sherreta Harrison (Sustainability Catalyst, MetroMorphosis)

Many of you may know I am part of the team at Metromorphosis and we’re partnering with Walls for the OneRouge Coalition. At Metromorphosis we’re less concerned about the specific issues and more about the ways people work together for those issues. Systems change is about shifting the conditions that are holding a problem in place. If you have a challenge and there are certain conditions that are keeping that challenge in place, then systems change is about shifting those conditions that keep things in place. My solutions are wrapped up in the six conditions.

1) Policy - be mindful of those people we put in place to create policy.

2) Practices - those things that are not necessarily law but standard operating procedures. A lot of that stems from efficiency and not equity.

3) Resource flows - how money and other assets are distributed. How does information get to people? How does money get to people?

4) Relationships and connections - It’s important to build networks but we have to go beyond knowing and coordinating with one another. We have to have authentic relationships. That’s one of the reasons this call is so important.

5) Power dynamics - About decision making power, both formal and informal. YOu have to understand where decisions are made and we need to redistribute that power so it’s not concentrated and evenly distributed.

6) Mental models - habits of thoughts. What are the deeply held beliefs and assumptions that underlie the work?

No one person can tackle all of these. What are those six things that are keeping all of these things in place and how can we work together to address those? Collective action describes the process and collective impact describes the outcome, which is ultimately the changing of the systems.

Courtney Scott (Assistant Chief Administrative Officer, City/Parish of Baton Rouge)

We’re excited to join you all in this anniversary. Let’s talk about what Baton Rouge has been doing and where we were 10 years ago. We’ve had forward progress in leadership and racial equity and to make disinvestment a foreign language. We have a long way to go, but we have to take a moment to honor how far we’ve come. The goal of Safe Hopeful Healthy is to not only build solutions, it’s about creating the platform and pathways to make government part of community work. What I love about Rev. Anderson is that she holds my feet to the fire to make sure we have the people at the table that need to be there. Are we there yet? Not yet. As we build a few programs and solutions from the mayors office, it’s about catalyzing the work that you all are doing. My call to action is to join us at our ecosystem meetings every 3rd Wednesday at River Center Library 5:00pm dinner. We need every stakeholder at that meeting so we can chart out the needs. Now meeting at the downtown library and there are some virtual, but we’re working on that. We are working with EBR Schools on a few key locations that are seeing the most exposure to violence. We are working with those students one on one to help them in any ways they need. We started at capitol and glen oaks and then we are moving it to the other high risk schools. How can we get more people at the table that represent these students. Another program we’re working on is violence interrupters. In the past we worked in 70802 and 70805. We were able to hire violence interventionists. They are actually hiring those individuals now. How do we evolve this program. Violence is plaguing our entire community. July 7 and 8, two individuals will come to Baton Rouge to train people in this work. We are building a relationship with BRPD, so our interventionists and prevent retaliation. We are not looking to solve cases, but community does have the ability to solve some problems. Another area we’re doing is leveraging a culture of health. We know our community is experiencing trauma. We are really dealing with disinvestment in a community that has been dealing with trauma over and over again. How do we start to build opportunities. There’s a long road with that. Recently we were awarded 1 million dollars to use traditional and non traditional modalities and make them available in local areas. We’re starting with community organizations, but we’re looking to build out best practices for that. Once that’s accepted at Metro Council we will have community meetings over 90 days to meet with people working in these communities to get the best feedback on how to implement this. This is all about building platforms and pathways to get to a place of sustainability.

Pepper Roussel (Program Coordinator, OneRouge Coalitions)

OneRouge is about ensuring that folks that are in poverty are able to stand on their feet. Equity is the foundation to say that people will not need these services in the future. Equity is our overarching objective. WE have three coalitions that are stood up. Transportation and mobility. It’s not just about getting one place to the next. We also have education, which is not just k-12, but birth through adulthood. CAFE is our flagship. In this moment we are identifying the task force of these groups. Each coalition is going to be building how we are addressing the opportunities for equity. The reason we are standing them up individually is so as we’re making these moves we are not creating unintended consequences.

QUESTIONS:

When we are looking at coalition building is territoriality and secret keeping. Sometimes there’s this idea of scarcity vs abundance. We are all doing something and some are doing things that are similar. What are your visions of breaking down the institutional silos to pool together resources to put more towards these issues out there?

Courtney Scott - All of our work needs transparency. I personally have concern when people ask who are you serving. We can give generic data, but I don’t want to polarize or exploit the people we’re serving. It’s a challenge. I can’t ask my youth or their parents to be part of my case study. The representation of the community meetings is where I see the transparency. It’s a concern that we’re asking folks who have already been disinvested to be my champion.

Casey Phillips - When we started these Friday calls I cannot express the number of people who read the meeting notes and I’m watching the things that happen because those things that have been shared. I lived in New Orleans when Katrina hit and I snuck back into the city and watched what felt like the world had ended. I watched bus tours and helicopter tours to see all of these people who were just looking and it felt exploitative. The reality is bringing people to where that was, allowed a flow of resources that are still coming in because it imprinted in people’s brains what had happened. And the third thing that honors the humans they serve is Dustin with Front Yard Bikes. They celebrate the people they work with and don’t exploit them. Philosophically they are there to fill the need. It’s a slow erosion of the power and money grab that we are working together.

Community Announcements

PLEASE Join us Saturday with your Congregations, organizations and circles;

Enough is Enough !

We have to turn things around and push for SOLUTIONS!

This Saturday

9-11am

Galvez plaza

238 North Blvd

Next to the River center Library