The definition of the practice
When I started to think about the generic practices of Life Competence, I decided that I wanted to be broader, rather than narrower in my thinking. Life Competence is about any challenge that a community may face, so I wanted the practices to be more general rather than specific. But I also wanted to give a sense of the scope or the range of a particular practice.
I also wanted to define the practice on the basis of experience. So I have taken the stories that are in the Knowledge Asset and use those stories to define the scope of the practice.
This might sound fine, but I have found two dilemmas as I tried to apply this approach.
First dilemma. If I say that I will use the stories to define the practice, how do I choose the stories? When I say that a story is relevant to a particular practice, I am making an assertion about that practice. It seems to me that in reality there is an infinite loop where the stories define the practice and, in turn, the practice defines the stories that are relevant to that practice.
Second dilemma. The second dilemma leads on from the first one. As time goes by and I collect more stories, there is a natural tendency to extend the scope of a practice. As I do this for each practice, there lead to overlap between the practices (and for overlap between the stories that illustrate the practice). Is this a problem? Here is my current principle for thinking about this dilemma: underlap is worse than overlap.It seems to me that it is not too much of a problem if we consider and issue twice in a Self Assessment because there is an overlap in the practices of the Self Assessment. It is a bigger problem if we fail to consider an issue because of an underlap in the practices of the Self Assessment.
An example: the practice of 'Mobilising resources'
We find the practice of 'Mobilising resources' in every Self Assessment framework since the earliest versions of the Self Assessment for AIDS Competence. When I think about a practice or when I talk about a practice, I like to be able to use a verb. A practice is about some that I DO and so I would to have a practice with a verb that tells me what I do. So in the past I have used 'We mobilise resources' as the practice. Unfortunately, I have found that while this is nice in theory, it doesn't work well in practice. We use the title of the practice as a label to refer to an idea. A label is a thing and so should use a noun. Perhaps we can use a single noun as the label for the practice and then have a single sentence that gives an indication of the scope of the practice.
On this occasion, I went back to the stories which we are using in the Knowledge Asset. I discovered that we are talking about something richer than mobilise. 'Mobilise' means to bring into use the things that we already recognise that we have. With our practice, I think that we are trying to identify something broader. Sometimes we need to make ourselves aware that we have resources that we have failed to recognise. At other times we need to explore more widely in order to access resources. And at other times, we need to recognise that we need to develop a talent so that it becomes available to us.
So here is the practice and here is the single sentence.
Resources:
'We identify, we access and we develop the resources that we need to reach our dream'
The dream for 'Resources'
Here is how our group defined the dream for the practice 'Mobilising resources' in the first phase of this project:
Together we will recognise and use our own resources, both financial and non-financial to achieve something. Our achievements help us access resources beyond our own to achieve more.
To discover my dream for the practice of 'Resources' I read the stories and listened to the videos many videos about 'Resources' to help me to identify the elements of the dream. I have included the elements of this dream in a map that I built as I was going through the content on this sub-page.
Resources
'We identify we access and we develop the resources that we need to reach our dream.'
The process of Community Life Competence is our normal way of working. We appreciate strengths, we care, we dream, we plan and we act. At each stage in the process we discover, uncover and use the resources in our community and in our extended community.
We nurture and we develop the resources in our community and our extended community. We engage in the political and administrative process to the extent possible.