The three Es are the cornerstone of a successful Community-to-Community organization: Exposure, Education and Engagement. Introduction There are a variety of C2C models within the US and abroad, but despite their different goals, structure, focus or mission statements, all share the same passion that transpires in what they have in common: the three “Es”. Exposure Education Engagement This proposal focuses on the creation of a C2C model for Greater Savannah, and more specifically on the existing international communities. It will become clear that the three “Es” are the key ingredients and the corner stone of what will ultimately become the strong foundation upon which an organizational structure to build, maintain, service and expand our international communities can be realized. General Background Now that we have established the corner stone of what will ultimately become the foundation of our structure and organization, it is imperative to elaborate on why these seemingly “mysterious” three “Es” are so crucial to the success of any C2C model, independent of the market it ultimately serves. · Exposure Without real-life exposure to existing international communities, it is impossible to comprehend or understand what drives them, what lives and breaths within them and therefore what they desire, need and want. One could simply approach or watch any international community from the outside and still not understand the ethnic or cultural intricacies of said group because the vision is limited and distorted by external views, opinions, pre-conceptions or even misconceptions, all of which result in either a limited or incorrect definition of the community at hand. We typically refer to this as the “outside-in” view whereby observed or noticed needs, shortcomings or gaps, i.e. inside functionalities, are identified against predefined outside parameters that may lead to incorrect strategies and functionality of the C2C model in itself. A second and healthier approach would be to streamline our parameters within and through the “inside-out” view whereby the ethnic and cultural intricacies define the parameters that ultimately become the cornerstone of planned and executed strategies. The latter approach also hereby ensures that any and all functional strategies, both short-term and long-term, become flexible and are easily adjustable as such are driven by whichever change occurs on the inside. In order to ensure that the “inside-out” approach becomes the fundamental approach, it is imperative that the C2C model incorporates exposure, as it’s first and foremost requirement for future success. We will elaborate further on how to achieve exposure later on in this proposal. · Education The term education should be viewed in its broadest definition of the word possible and refers to self-education of the international communities through exposure. It also refers to cross-education among the multiple international communities whereby the educator becomes the student and vice versa, therefore making it a continuous and ongoing process without end or destiny. In essence, the process becomes a form of exposed education through repetitive exposure and self-education that leads to cross-education of any and all international communities. This process will obviously find its start within the C2C but will rapidly expand when the student becomes the educator, who in turn teaches the student to educate other international communities and so forth. The basic foundation of the C2C will see to it that through education the international communities become the self-propelled engine to ensure an ongoing process of exposure through education that leads to increased exposure. Again, we will address this second component in more detail and how to start the educational component of our foundation later on in this proposal. · Engagement Our final component, but certainly not the least, is engagement and more importantly how and why anyone would or could be engaged continuously in this fundamental aspect. In our view, we can separate the term “engagement” in two main components: -External or local engagement -Internal or international engagement Both components may seem contradictory at first and yet they are complimentary in nature when viewed with exposure and education. The external or local engagement component refers to the local and non-international population of Savannah and can therefore be called “external” since our goal and mission is to build a foundation and platform for, with and by our existing international communities. The internal or international engagement therefore by definition has to be internal since the component identifies participation from within the international communities. The result of bringing both components into a singular platform to operate from automatically supports and enforces the presence of both exposure and education thereby stabilizing what will ultimately become a strong and integrated support system for the future organizational and operating structure of the C2C. More details about how this third E-component and the previous two will be initiated, designed, built and structured will be provided later on in this proposal. For the time being and at this juncture, we have provided a brief overview of what the theoretical design should be based upon and it is our hope that at this time the readers get the sense that our philosophical approach is intentional and accentuates our belief that through cultural exposure, education and engagement, one can build the foundation for an all-encompassing structure that not only supports the international character of Greater Savannah but accentuates and highlights to both our residents as well as visitors that we are indeed international from the inside out as well as from the outside in.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:55:11 +0000
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