The Emergence Collective team is excited to feature a blog post written by Andrea Paine, one of our partners at the Huron River Watershed Council (HRWC). We believe the more transparency we can bring to the thinking that informs our work and that of our partners, the better! It was an absolute pleasure and privilege to work with the HRWC team. We’re grateful for the kind words the HRWC team shared about us, but here’s the thing: we were only successful because of the dedication and “let’s get it done” attitude of the HRWC team. They focused consistently on how to integrate the learning from our brain trust into the larger organization, and that intentionality ultimately paid off and gained momentum. If you'd like to reach out to Andrea or the HRWC team directly, email Andrea at <apaine@hrwc.org>.
As a small nonprofit, we at the Huron River Watershed Council (HRWC) frequently turn to partners to strengthen capacity, provide expertise, and increase the reach of our work to protect and restore the Huron River in Southeast Michigan. Over the past two years, we had the pleasure of collaborating with Emergence Collective on a project to strengthen community engagement and gain deep insight on local water priorities among watershed residents.
About the Huron River Watershed Council
Here is some important context about us: Since 1965, our organization has provided education, technical assistance, and science programming for residents and watershed communities in the region. We monitor the quality of the Huron River and lead programs and projects on watershed restoration, pollution prevention, natural resource protection, resident education, and land use planning. Although our organization’s focus is within a defined local area, our watershed spans a variety of demographic profiles with over 650,000 residents across over 60 municipalities.
In our last strategic planning process, we identified a self-reinforcing cycle that limited our ability to fully represent the broad swath of watershed residents. Here is what that cycle looks like: For most projects conducted at HRWC, there often is not enough funding or time for social research and engagement prior to project launch. As a consequence, our messaging and goals do not always align with the unique values, resources, and priorities of residents within the project area. We engage residents in developing projects and plans, but often these residents are already within our existing network, and we’re using strategies that already exist in our organizational toolbox. This narrow frame reinforces our biases toward communities with pre-established relationships, which has led to shortcomings and gaps in the geographic and demographic reach of projects and our organization as a whole. And thus the problem we identified is that many communities—often those overburdened by environmental hazards—have been disproportionately underrepresented in our work.
About the Project
So what were we going to do to have sustained engagement in order to serve a broader representation of our watershed residents’ local priorities for water?
We started by designing and securing funding for a three-year community engagement project that aimed to build new relationships with areas historically underserved by the organization, and to initiate community-led identification of water priorities. This project sought to better understand water values, interests, and visions in three selected communities via surveys, interviews, focus groups, and tabling. The hypothesis was that the knowledge acquired would then inspire the creation of projects that support watershed health, river recreation, and environmental stewardship in these communities.
Partnering with Emergence Collective
We had the watershed knowledge, but we were interested in partners with community engagement and learning knowledge. While our organization brought a history of community outreach and education, the resident-level, equity-centered approach to community engagement was largely new to our organization. Here is where Emergence Collective played a vital role in guiding and supporting our project. Lauren and Ebonie of Emergence Collective trained our team in new skills and techniques to facilitate community engagement, and served as steadfast learning companions throughout the project. The Emergence Collective team was there for us step-by-step and provided our team with valuable insight, feedback, and strategy to steer the project. They helped us to acknowledge biases, recognize opportunities, and learn and evolve along the way. These emergent learning principles adopted from EC continue to be foundational to our approach to community engagement.
Additionally, we remain inspired by Emergence Collective’s capacity to support our team with humility, grace, and an abundance mindset. While they undoubtedly brought knowledge and insights to our project, they never claimed to be the experts. Instead, they uplifted us in realizing our own abilities with community engagement, evaluation, and data analysis. They were consistently willing to share lessons learned and skills to strengthen our ability to be self-sufficient down the road when conducting community engagement.
This knowledge exchange has continued to expand since the end of our partnership with Emergence Collective. Our project team harnessed our new community engagement tools and shared our learnings with the rest of our staff. As a team predominantly composed of scientists, our staff has been inquisitive and eager to integrate this approach into their work to protect and restore the Huron River. The principles, frameworks, and approaches to community engagement we developed in tandem with Emergence Collective will continue to guide our organization’s efforts for years to come.
If you’re interested in the details of what we learned in these three communities through our engagement process, please take a look at our story maps. We’re committed to continuing sharing not just what we learned about these communities, but how we’re learning with others in order to encourage more investment from other funders and local nonprofits in equity-centered resident engagement.