Community Mapping
The The National Center for Media Engagement asserts that Community Mapping "is a great way to identify local assets, networks and opportunities in your community. Using data and some free tools available on the internet, you can create a visual display of key community organizations, partners, and even related issues."[1]
The primary focus of this article is on community mapping tools, strategies and techniques geared towards building solidarity among various interest groups within a community, and to foster strong alliances between local unions and key allies in the community.
Rationale
We live in an age when large corporate and financial interests aggressively seek to privatize and control public services. Some have called the private sector's encroachment into the public sphere the new enclosure.[2][3] A relatively few politically and economically powerful interests align themselves to push agendas that are often in direct conflict with those who are significantly affected by decisions made beyond their control.
How do those of us who are negatively affected by decisions made by a handful of powerful interests fight back?
- Building Community
- Q: How can potential allies within a community proactively reach out and engage with one another?
- A: An effective community map can connect groups and organizations within a community, helping them come together around specific issues. Maps can consider geographic, demographic, occupational, economic, organizational type, etc. to discover common areas of interest among organizations and community groups.
Gathering Data
- Potential Participants
- Union Locals
- Community Organizations
- Neighborhood Groups
- Data Elements
- geographic
- demographic
- occupational
- socio-economic
- organizational type
- Key Questions
- What is each group's primary focus?
- Who are the key contacts?
- What struggles are they currently engaged with?
- Where do struggles overlap?
- What is each organization stance on a particular issue?
- (Rankings like 1 = highly positive -to- 5 = highly negative.)
- What community do they serve?
- Where do they operate?
- Where do they meet?
- How often do they meet; when do they meet (days/dates/times)?
- How does decision-making happen?
Resources
Community Alliances
- (Also see Labor-Community Alliances.)
- Building a Union-Community Alliance that Lasts (Labor Notes)
- Workers and homeowners, union members and community activists—all had a reason to march against Bank of America. Our protest was another step in building the relationship between unionized working people and working-class community organizations, especially among immigrants. It’s a relationship that the North Shore Labor Council has been carefully nurturing for years. The march brought together 300 union members and community allies, both to support “labor’s issue”—the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which Bank of America has attacked—and to denounce the bank’s home foreclosures.
Resources include the following (and many others):
- - Basic Chemistry for Community Change
- - Building Community Alliances - Book 5 Community Development Skills Guides
Community Mapping
- Features a webinar that's divided into two parts. The 2nd part seems to hang about a third of the way through. Other resources include:
- - An expired Delicious page promising links to other resources.
- - The powerpoint presentation used in the webinar.
- - Written instructions on how to map your community using Google Earth, PDF or Word.
- - A zipped file of the sample data used in the presentation.
- Community Mapping - A Visual Narrative: Community mapping is a vibrant way of telling a neighborhood's story. It can highlight the rich array of neighborhood assets, analyze the relationship between income and the location of services, or document vacant lots and buildings.
- This resource features lots of good information, including:
- - Description of what community mapping is.
- - Reasons why it's useful.
- - How to use community mapping. ...and more...
Much of this information is also available on PolicyLink's COMMUNITY MAPPING.pdf.
- Covers Community Mapping (identifying the segments and goals of the community), Content Mapping (creating a plan for which content goes where, and why), and Data Tracking (pulling all the numbers together) from a DIY perspective. Includes sample templates.
Topics
- Community Mapping
- - Step 1: Identify all the groups within your community.
- - Step 2: Define the goals that match each group.
- - Step 3: Identify the tools. (Online and off-line ways to communicate.)
- Content Mapping
- - Step 1: Identify all the content.
- - Step 2: Goals.
- - Step 3: Identify all the possible outlets. (What specific ways is a particular community communicating--both within the community and outside the community?)
- Metrics Tracking
- - (Collecting and evaluating all relevant data.)
- Reporting (Putting the most relevant data into comprehensible context.)
- - Internal reporting
- - External reporting
- Communicating with the crowd and the community are very different but can both be really valuable for the success of your campaign or call to action. Setting goals and defining messaging at the start of your process to target each group will help you plan for and engage beyond just those you know.
- From Web Site: The Center for Community Mapping (CCM) has a keen interest in collaborating with local organizations to provide interactive mapping applications particularly to educational, and environmental. We have several web-based interactive mapping applications that are licensable to communities and use Interactive Maps technology to provide for them.
Community Collaboration
One big payoff for all your community mapping efforts is to find partners to collaborate with.
- Crowd Sourcing
- In an effort to reveal the extent of political ad spending that occurs in key television markets, ProPublica has put together one of the most ambitious crowdsourcing projects in recent memory, and learned a thing or two about how to encourage crowd participation.
