What kind of help can community people seek to get, and how can we define the roles we are looking for?
As ‘members’ we often don’t know how to help. Or we may feel like the things we do aren’t enough of a contribution.
As ‘community leaders’ we don’t always give names to roles that we need help with. Perhaps being more explicit with names will help members see where they fit and the value they can provide.
I stumbled upon The Butterfly Model from Yes Magazine, which suggests we need people in each of the four areas to achieve social change:
Resisters: the people in the blockades, the protests, the work stoppages;
Reformers: the folks trying to make change from within systems, including schoolteachers and elected officials, like those getting into the prosecutor’s office and working to get sentences lowered;
Builders: those who create alternative institutions such as freedom schools, farms, and health clinics; and
Healers: the conflict mediators, the therapists, the preachers, the singers, the dancers, the artists—“all the folks that are gonna make us well,” she said.
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