Learning Communities
Bring forth the knowledge and wisdom from the group
Meeting Intentions specializes in bringing diverse groups of people, working in a specific sector, to share best practices and challenges with each other and learn together.
We learn from each others' experiences to stay relevant, productive, competitive, and provide good service in this world.
Each meeting is designed to be educational, inspiring, energetic and exploratory.
This is done in a collaborative fashion, with presentations, teamwork, and sharing.
Get in touch to learn more about how we can create a learning community for your sector.
Examples of Our Work
For the past few years, I have had the pleasure of facilitating a number of Learning Communities:
The Montgomery County Food Pantry Peer Learning Circle (PLC), comprised of representatives of 50 food pantries in Montgomery County, Pa and the neighboring counties. Over 3 years we tackled various pantry concerns including food systems thinking, creating a culture of advocacy, fundraising & grant-writing, client and food tracking systems, Bridges out of Poverty®, bringing fresh foods into pantries, “Choice Pantries”, volunteer recruitment and management, improving nutrition quality and services, financial recording and reporting, ServSafe® Training, collaborative data gathering and sense-making, etc. We used an inclusive approach, anyone with interest was welcome. We had between 35-40 in attendance at each meeting which were offered 4 times a year. Each included guest speakers, small group work and thinking, and large group discussion. This has been a very successful learning community.
Sponsored by: The HealthSpark Foundation, Colmar, Pa
Results: 1) Relationship-building, 2) Increased knowledge and sharing on each topic, and 3) Increased collaboration between pantries
Generation Work Practitioner Learning Community (PLC) for Philadelphia Workforce Practitioners. Practitioner organizations offer workforce training skills. This learning community focuses on peer-learning and capacity building for organizations assisting young Philadelphia adults, ages 18-28 for job preparedness. We began by assessing the needs of a smaller group of staff to discover their primary focus and concerns, and expertise. During the first year, meetings focused on: Peer coaching on organizational staffing structures and management, asset mapping, collaborative funding, developing a logic model for collaborative work, co-creating an online recruitment and referral platform, defining Quality Job Placement and Metrics. This PLC expanded in year 2 to include staff who directly work with young adults. This larger group of 30-40, spent time learning about each other’s programs and offerings and recruitment, referral and right fit processes, and discussed the effect of trauma on learning and development, integrating restorative practices in workforce development, fine tuning the recruitment and referral online platform, and Quality Job Placement and Pathways.
This Practitioner Learning Community is funded through the Job Opportunity Investment Network (JOIN) at The United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southeastern New Jersey, through funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Results: 1) Relationships and collaboration between organizations, 2) Knowledge sharing 3) Quality Job Placement Definition 4) Recruitment and Referral Online Platform 4) Quality Job Pathway development.