OUR WORK
The Let's Care Collective has been working with the Department of Opportunities and Social Development to positively impact the lives of youth in care and youth transitioning out of care. This work has been led by a Lived Experience Team (LET) and done in collaboration with our Nova Scotia government partners. We have created and facilitated workshops, consulted on programs and projects and developed systems change programs for government employees. All of this work has been done while prioritizing the well being of the lived experience team.
PROJECTS
METHODOLOGY
PARTICIPATORY FACILITATION
The Let’s Care Collective uses collaborative and participatory facilitation practices for all of the work. The team is trained in meeting and program design as well as methods like check in, world cafe, group ice breakers and creative games. The LET is supported to develop and practice these skills throughout our work internally and with our training.
In 2024, The Let's Care Collective hosted a facilitation training called “We Got This” for our team and other community organizations who were looking to increase their capacity in group facilitation.
FISHBOWL: STORY SHARING FROM LIVED EXPERIENCE
The central teaching method that The Collective uses is called The Fishbowl. This process allows for the LET to share stories in response to specific questions in a conversational format that is witnessed by the participants. This method prioritizes the LET’s ability to respond to the questions and talk with one another about their experiences without interference or questions from the participants. This promotes a sense of agency and choice about which experiences LET members want to share in that moment and how deep they feel able to go. This reinforces a sense of protection and autonomy for the LET when sharing about the harm and trauma that has been inflicted by the systems that they are speaking about.
Over the course of the work, The Collective has offered Fishbowl sessions online and in person. Although both of these formats have been effective for the participants, the LET has a preference for the online version, where the participants “disappear” when they turn their videos off and the LET can experience the sharing with each other more closely.
PRINCIPLES
To set the tone and culture of working in a Human Centered Approach, the Let's Care Collective created principles for how we wanted to work together. With the understanding that we often revert to old habits while in the midst of projects, these principles were meant to keep us on track and aligned with the values of Human Centered work.
RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIPS
We create intentional relationships of mutuality that disrupt patterns of extraction and exploitation with our Lived Experience Team. This takes shape in our facilitation design by switching up the power dynamics and allowing everyone to experience the giving and receiving of knowledge and care.
HUMAN-CENTRED APPROACH
We prioritize the people who are most impacted by systems we are trying to change, and we invite humanness and vulnerability from all participants. Our work is responsive to the needs of the people who are involved. This means changing direction, slowing down, and adapting language to include and accommodate our team and participants.
PROCESS-ORIENTED
We tend to the “way” we do things-- not just the “what”, creating a culture of work that reflects our values. The words are easy, but doing what we say is much more difficult.
We are committed to practicing our principles in every part of our work. If we are moving forward with a project too fast or because the outcome is urgently needed, we aspire to slow down and question whether the process we are engaging in prioritizes the people and the learning as much as the product.
COLLABORATIVE WORK
We practice collaboration and connection amongst our teams and resist being overtaken by individual agendas. This often means building the process together. Genuine collaboration is not the usual way of working for many organizations and government departments. Often, people with Lived Experience are asked to consult or offer feedback on programs and services that have already been created. The Collective engages with their partners early on to co-create the process for working together. This allows us to build in time for meaningful relationships of trust and respect.
APPRECIATE DIFFERENCE
We respect each other’s unique backgrounds and experiences and encourage curiosity and compassion. In our LET story sharing, we encourage team members to share experiences that conflict with one another. Hearing multiple experiences of the same circumstance can challenge the urge to jump to simple solutions. It requires patience and deeper understanding to create solutions that meet the needs of many different people, and their individual contexts.
RESISTANCE TO URGENCY
Productivity and efficiency are highly regarded in professional arenas. The Collective
moves at the pace of people’s capacity while attending to relationships of trust and care. The work we are engaged in is inherently urgent; there are people who are struggling and suffering the harms of the current system every day. We believe that this work is so important that we must resist the tendency to allow the productivity of reactionary solutions to take over. We are aware that reacting from a place of urgency can cause further harm. We believe that there is wisdom in building trust and a feeling of safety for our participants to access insights, creativity and deeper solutions.