Our Refreshed Community of Practice: October Nourish & Thrive

Highlights from Our October Community of Practice

Thank you to everyone who joined and contributed to our October Nourish & Thrive session! We are especially grateful to our feature member for this gathering, Ashton from Chase & Area Family Services, for hosting us and sharing some of her organization’s opportunities and challenges to help spark thoughtful dialogue on Creating Space and Just Processes for Strategic Planning. 

Some highlights from our conversations included: 

• Leveraging External Support and Funding: Discussions on the value of engaging consultants or facilitators for strategic planning, who can share relevant expertise, provide external perspectives and help with environmental scans. Participants also shared tips for approaching consultants with limited budgets, accessing potential funding opportunities, and framing strategic planning as a key investment in organizational capacity. 

• Holistic Engagement: Many members emphasized the importance of engaging board members, staff, external partners, and community members in the planning process to create a shared community-informed vision while building collective buy-in. 

• Embedding Strategic Planning as an Ongoing Process: Dialogue around strategic planning as an active, integrated part of board and management responsibilities, reflecting on the importance of flexibility and regular reflection/adaptation points to ensure responsiveness to emergent opportunities and community needs.   

With our transition to seasonal CoP sessions, we look forward to gathering again in the new year.  Please feel free to reach out with any topic suggestions and/or if you are interested in being a feature member for a future session! 

Overall Community of Practice Updates

We’re thrilled to bring back our Nourish & Thrive Community of Practice after a thoughtful summer pause! During the break, we took the opportunity to reflect on how our sessions can best serve our members and ensure a balance between deep, reflective discussions and practical, actionable insights. As such, we are adopting an Appreciative Inquiry approach. This model is designed to foster deeper connections, learning, and support across our network.

What to Expect:

Quarterly Gatherings: Join us once every season for an engaging 1.5 hour virtual gathering!

Relevant Themes & Featured Member: Each session will have a spotlighted member who will speak to their work and share a key challenge from their organization as a focus topic for the session. While this member will ground our session, the themes and insights will resonate with many of you, creating opportunities for shared growth.

Knowledge & Resource Sharing: Exchange resources, best practices, and success stories related to food justice and early years initiatives.

Networking Opportunities: Connect with like-minded folks, build partnerships, and expand your support network.

Session Follow-Up: FRP-BC will dedicate engagement hours to sending out relevant resources, helping support possible actions that arise for the featured member, and sharing back relevant progress, resource development and/or emergent opportunities stemming from this work with all members.

We sincerely hope you’ll join us for this and future sessions as we explore relevant topics, honour collective knowledge, and continue building a resilient, justice-centered community of practice. Your participation is key to making this initiative a success, and we welcome ongoing feedback to ensure Nourish & Thrive remains relevant, responsive, and impactful for all members.

For any questions, feedback, or additional information, please contact our Engagement Lead, Delanie, at engagement@frpbc.ca.   

We can’t wait to welcome new and familiar faces to Nourish & Thrive with us!