Community Weaving: An Inspiring Lecture on Community Engagement. [06/19/2007]

by Denise O'Brien

Cheryl Honey delivered an inspiring lecture to thirty faculty, staff and students on Monday, June 4th. Her lecture told her story about community weaving, what it is and why it is so important to the community.

“Community weaving is a grassroots, concrete way to help others,” according to Cheryl Honey, founder of the Family Support Network. Visiting Tampa in June for consultation with the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County and USF, she advised a group of over thirty faculty, staff and interns meeting at the Collaborative and FMHI that “The goal with community weaving is to have less reliance on formal systems and to shift the delivery system to empower people to help others.”

Cheryl Honey, nationally-recognized community weaving expert and founder of Family Support Network (FSN), has developed an innovative approach where volunteers comprise a network of resources to families in their communities. Individuals complete an inventory of their personal skills, knowledge and abilities – their assets - through telephone conversations and a web-based application, which then makes their resources available to others in the Network.

Honey explained that the idea of “community weaving” began when a small group of families realized their specific needs were not being met by local agencies. This led to a grassroots effort to form a community network of resources and ultimately, in February 1993, the formation of the Family Support Network (FSN), a non-profit 501(c) 3 organization.

FSN defines community weaving as a social change methodology that incorporates the use of web-based technology to weave human and tangible resources of the grassroots community together with the knowledge and skills of more formal assistance systems. This philosophy encourages people to take responsibility for what they care about, and to recruit and train others in their communities to share their unique skills in an effort to improve the overall quality of life in the community.

Honey outlined the role that community weavers have within a community, and emphasized their importance in working with both the community volunteers and members, as well as working with the more formal, local assistance programs. Community weavers undergo three days of training to learn how to begin their own community support network. They are taught not only how to recognize and assist those who can benefit from this support network, but are also trained to recognize those community members who may need more help than the network can offer - and refer them to the more formal assistance system for additional help.

For more information on this topic, visit www.communityweaving.org.

For more information on the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County, visit www.childrensboard.org.

The USF Collaborative is a recognized central point of contact, facilitator and matchmaker for new partnerships between University faculty and students, nationally known researchers, local government, service organizations and professionals to build a better Tampa Bay community. For more information about the Collaborative and its programs, visit http://www.usfcollab.usf.edu or contact the Collaborative director, Judi Jetson, at 813-974-7318, or Jetson@usfcollab.usf.edu.