On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 6:29 AM Paul J. Weiss pjweiss@uw.edu wrote:
I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake that will have negative impacts well into the future.
Actually I think the opposite is just as likely to be true. I've been thinking for a while that actually the best way for the WMF to be good at working with "the community" (or, indeed, the many other communities that we should be working with) is not necessarily for the WMF to have a department called "community engagement". The other departments within WMF should (and, in many cases, do) have many competencies, projects and areas of focus that involve working with communities, and it looks like the aim here is to make 'community engagement' more mainstream within the other parts of the WMF.
You're right to point out that there are ways that this could go wrong, if parts of CE end up being put in places where their new managers and wider teams don't get it or don't prioritise that kind of work. However, it could also go right, if those other teams/departments broaden in scope in response to include more goals around working with the community. It all depends how deeply embedded a culture of community engagement becomes across the organization.
I did just want to ask about this, though:
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for ... the planned
restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
I'd not heard that this was happening, possibly because I'd not been paying attention or because it's been discussed in other fora but not this one. If this is still likely to happen in the new structure, can someone tell us more?
Thanks!
Chris