CAN’s Summer Cohort 2022

Our Community Animator Network continues to grow with amazing leaders across Kansas. This past weekend we welcomed a new cohort of Animators. In this group we have 11 Animators from Lindsborg, Wichita, Iola, and Lawrence! Their interests range from children aging out of foster care, to unionizing. How incredible!

This past Sunday, they all convened at our office and we started our time together discussing neighboring culture and its benefits to community wellbeing. Over the next 7 weeks, they will be learning foundational skills of Asset-Based Community Development to discover what’s strong in their neighborhoods and be the catalyst for positive change. 

Animators spent time mapping out what assets are currently visible and invisible where they live. It was great to hear what similarities and differences they shared across neighborhoods in KS. Some of our folks live in rural areas and are physically more distant from neighbors compared to urban neighborhoods. Others live in areas where porches are common, making neighboring more accessible than those without a porch. All these factors make where we live unique, meaning our Animators will be the experts in mobilizing local assets. 

We also spent time discovering the passions, skills, and talents that exist within the cohort. We have Animators who are passionate about a variety of community topics like voter outreach, child welfare, education, and mental health to name a few. We actually filled a pretty large whiteboard with all types of individual capacities! We only stopped adding to it because we ran out of space! It was amazing to see Animators already connecting on shared experiences and interests.

We closed out our time with a game of ‘Social Capital Jenga’, in which they had to add or take away certain colored blocks based on real world situations. This helps them visualize how things like housing design or even individual decisions impact neighborhoods directly.

We are so excited for our new cohort of Animators! Join us on social media (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn!) to keep cheering on our Animators.