Our mission is to: CONNECT BATTLE GROUND
Our Purpose is Expanding the Caring Adult Network: Recruit, Train and Support Caring Adults to partner with kids in existing contexts until healthy cross-generational connection is measurable as "the way we do it" in Battle Ground.
Our Vision - a community of caring adults and kids partnered to transform lives by connecting Battle Ground.
Our Target Population is youth from school age to 26 in the Battle Ground School District area.
Our Vision - a community of caring adults and kids partnered to transform lives by connecting Battle Ground.
Our Target Population is youth from school age to 26 in the Battle Ground School District area.
Connect BG Leadership
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3 Connect BG Principles
Collaboration - We believe that an inclusive approach that brings together all the potential perspectives and influencers around any given issue will produce a more balanced and powerful approach to systemic change. Transformation - We believe we are participating in a cultural shift, a movement that is long term and sustainable. It is a complex effort that requires alteration of perspectives and determination to see it through. Relationship - Both the structure of the coalition and the health of the individuals involved depends on the nature and health of relational connections. We believe that operating by these three principles will produce four outcomes. |
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Collaboration + Mentoring
An Explanation of Collaboration: Why & How
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4 Connect BG Outcomes
There are four outcomes that will tell us we have been successful Youth and Community Connectedness:
Social-Emotional Well Being The capacity to engage in healthy relationships with a beneficial perspective of oneself is key to overall individual health and contributes to the health of the community. Engagement in Healthy Behaviors Providing opportunity for and encouragement toward healthy behaviors as an alternative to self-destructive behaviors. Equipped for Life’s Work and Prepared for Adulthood Attending to the practical life skills needed to be a productive member of the community and social structure. We apply these 3 principles to accomplish our 4 outcomes using 5 strategies: |
5 Connect BG Strategies
Collaboration - both a principle and a strategy: before we can expect individuals to prioritize connectedness over independence, our leading organizations must deconstruct their silos and restore the relational structures that connect their resources. We search for promising collaborative matches and seek to integrate the efforts of people and organizations with common resource needs, complementary agendas and coinciding chronologies. We use a system we have devised to identify and connect organizations.
The Caring Adult Network - Relationships are our key proven strategy. Focusing primarily on establishing and supporting healthy cross-generational relationships. We support the growth of existing organizations and programs and seek to bring these kind of relationships to the forefront of existing efforts in the community. We also work to encourage informal cross-generational relationships around shared interests.
Ongoing Communication
Empower Individual Roles - We continually offer opportunity for individuals of any age to participate in our mission on all levels. Every person has a role to play. Story Telling, flower wielding, and involvement in programs and events.
Mutually Beneficial Activities - We create opportunities for collaboration, intergenerelational mentoring, communication and individual involvement by fostering and supporting activities that allow the participation of multiple entities and create healthy mentoring environments. Some of these are quarterly gatherings, Storytelling events, Fundraising Events, Leadership Day at Captain Strong, etc.
Collaboration - both a principle and a strategy: before we can expect individuals to prioritize connectedness over independence, our leading organizations must deconstruct their silos and restore the relational structures that connect their resources. We search for promising collaborative matches and seek to integrate the efforts of people and organizations with common resource needs, complementary agendas and coinciding chronologies. We use a system we have devised to identify and connect organizations.
The Caring Adult Network - Relationships are our key proven strategy. Focusing primarily on establishing and supporting healthy cross-generational relationships. We support the growth of existing organizations and programs and seek to bring these kind of relationships to the forefront of existing efforts in the community. We also work to encourage informal cross-generational relationships around shared interests.
Ongoing Communication
- We use Link Battle Ground and all relevant tools (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more) to support sharing of information between participants and the community.
- This includes an inclusive and sustained database of available resources for community members.
- It also includes a focus on maintaining shared evaluation practices.
Empower Individual Roles - We continually offer opportunity for individuals of any age to participate in our mission on all levels. Every person has a role to play. Story Telling, flower wielding, and involvement in programs and events.
Mutually Beneficial Activities - We create opportunities for collaboration, intergenerelational mentoring, communication and individual involvement by fostering and supporting activities that allow the participation of multiple entities and create healthy mentoring environments. Some of these are quarterly gatherings, Storytelling events, Fundraising Events, Leadership Day at Captain Strong, etc.
Collective Impact is a Proven collaborative Framework
We must purposefully design, build and maintain a Collective Impact that will grow and sustain itself over time.
"...collective impact is not merely a new process that supports the same social sector solutions but an entirely different model of social progress."
Collective Impact is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a complex social problem.
In order to create lasting solutions to social problems on a large-scale, organizations — including those in government, civil society, and the business sector — need to coordinate their efforts and work together around a clearly defined goal.
Collective Impact is a significant shift from the social sector’s current paradigm of "isolated impact," because the underlying premise of Collective Impact is that no single organization can create large-scale, lasting social change alone. There is no "silver bullet" solution to systemic social problems, and these problems cannot be solved by simply scaling or replicating one organization or program. Strong organizations are necessary but not sufficient for large-scale social change.
Not all social problems are suited for Collective Impact solutions. Collective Impact is best employed for problems that are complex and systemic rather than technical in nature. Collective Impact initiatives are currently being employed to address a wide variety of issues around the world, including education, healthcare, homelessness, the environment, and community development. Many of these initiatives are already showing concrete results, reinforcing the promise of Collective Impact in solving complex social problems.
"...an ongoing progression of alignment, discovery, learning, and emergence. In many instances, this progression greatly accelerates social change without requiring breakthrough innovations or vastly increased funding. Previously unnoticed solutions and resources from inside or outside the community are identified and adopted. Existing organizations find new ways of working together that produce better outcomes."
The Five Conditions of Collective Impact Success
Collective Impact is more rigorous and specific than collaboration among organizations. There are five conditions that, together, lead to meaningful results from Collective Impact:
Connect BG, Inc. IS the Backbone of our Collective Impact effort.
The Seven Core Functions of the Backbone Organization
Backbones must balance the tension between coordinating and maintaining accountability, while staying behind the scenes to establish collective ownership.
More to read about Collective Impact
There is much to learn about Collective Impact. We are indebted and very grateful to those who lead the way. Please investigate the following websites and articles by experts in the field. None of these articles were written by Connect Battle Ground.
Collective Impact
Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work
Understanding the Value of Backbone Organizations
Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexity "...predetermined solutions rarely work under conditions of complexity—conditions that apply to most major social problems—when the unpredictable interactions of multiple players determine the outcomes..."
Collective Impact is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a complex social problem.
In order to create lasting solutions to social problems on a large-scale, organizations — including those in government, civil society, and the business sector — need to coordinate their efforts and work together around a clearly defined goal.
Collective Impact is a significant shift from the social sector’s current paradigm of "isolated impact," because the underlying premise of Collective Impact is that no single organization can create large-scale, lasting social change alone. There is no "silver bullet" solution to systemic social problems, and these problems cannot be solved by simply scaling or replicating one organization or program. Strong organizations are necessary but not sufficient for large-scale social change.
Not all social problems are suited for Collective Impact solutions. Collective Impact is best employed for problems that are complex and systemic rather than technical in nature. Collective Impact initiatives are currently being employed to address a wide variety of issues around the world, including education, healthcare, homelessness, the environment, and community development. Many of these initiatives are already showing concrete results, reinforcing the promise of Collective Impact in solving complex social problems.
"...an ongoing progression of alignment, discovery, learning, and emergence. In many instances, this progression greatly accelerates social change without requiring breakthrough innovations or vastly increased funding. Previously unnoticed solutions and resources from inside or outside the community are identified and adopted. Existing organizations find new ways of working together that produce better outcomes."
The Five Conditions of Collective Impact Success
Collective Impact is more rigorous and specific than collaboration among organizations. There are five conditions that, together, lead to meaningful results from Collective Impact:
- Common Agenda: All participants have a shared vision for change including a common understanding of the problem and a joint approach to solving it through agreed upon actions
- Shared Measurement: Collecting data and measuring results consistently across all participants ensures efforts remain aligned and participants hold each other accountable
- Mutually Reinforcing Activities: Participant activities must be differentiated while still being coordinated through a mutually reinforcing plan of action
- Continuous Communication: Consistent and open communication is needed across the many players to build trust, assure mutual objectives, and appreciate common motivation
- Backbone Organization: Creating and managing collective impact requires a separate organization(s) with staff and a specific set of skills to serve as the backbone for the entire initiative and coordinate participating organizations and agencies
Connect BG, Inc. IS the Backbone of our Collective Impact effort.
The Seven Core Functions of the Backbone Organization
Backbones must balance the tension between coordinating and maintaining accountability, while staying behind the scenes to establish collective ownership.
- Guide Vision and Strategy
- Support Aligned Activities
- Establish Shared Measurement Practices
- Build Public Will
- Advance Policy
- Mobilize Funding
- Facilitate Communication
More to read about Collective Impact
There is much to learn about Collective Impact. We are indebted and very grateful to those who lead the way. Please investigate the following websites and articles by experts in the field. None of these articles were written by Connect Battle Ground.
Collective Impact
Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work
Understanding the Value of Backbone Organizations
Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexity "...predetermined solutions rarely work under conditions of complexity—conditions that apply to most major social problems—when the unpredictable interactions of multiple players determine the outcomes..."
Indicators and Evaluation Methods
We understand our work to be a complex effort in a complex, multi-faceted environment. This impacts our indicators and evaluation methods in several ways. It means:
We understand our work to be a complex effort in a complex, multi-faceted environment. This impacts our indicators and evaluation methods in several ways. It means:
- The design and implementation of our evaluation methods must be adaptive, flexible and iterative.
- We seek to understand the whole system, including components and the connections between them.
- We support the learning capacity of the system by fostering and nurturing feedback loops and improving access to shared information.
- We pay particular attention to context and are responsive to changes as they occur
- We look for effective principles of practice in action, rather than adherence to predetermined activities.
- We identify points of energy and influence, as well as ways in which momentum and power flow within the system. We use these points to focus our attention in a fluid and more effective way.
- We focus on the nature of relationships and interdependencies within the system.
- We explain the non-linear and multi-directional relationships between the initiative and its intended and unintended outcomes.
- We watch for patterns, both one-off and repeating, at different levels of the system.