Sustainability comes from impact
November 29, 2008 by Gail Bradbrook
The likelihood that CLG or others will “roll this out” is fairly small I think, from what heard, but worth hoping for…
However I think we need to think of sustainability from the levels of the interventions and impacts we are hoping to achieve:
- At the individual and community level- sustainability comes through increased social and cultural capital, especially when backed up by available, accessible and intuitive technologies…
- at the mentor level relates to enthusiasm generated to carry on, tools to network as a community of practice and get support, potentially ways to link in to current paid jobs or continue to be paid.
- at the organisational / network level/ training level: motivations to exist and sources of resourcing, inter networking abilities, use of technology to help people maintain relationships, publicly available, online tools, located with a or many sustainable organisations
- at the national level- champion(s) to fight the corner for mentors in Whitehall and seek future funding and tie to future opportunities, a lose alliance of key network organizations makes sense here?
Sustainability must take into account the many regional networks that exist, with current resources that can be built on, or that we shouldn’t lose. It should investigate the potential at the local authority level. It should embrace community development principles.
And I think sustainability should be linked intrinsically with scalability / breaking new ground.
We don’t want to look to create an “in crowd” of technically excited folks… though those types are very cool and helpful.. We need to also think about networks and places where this stuff is needed but may not exist, we might need to build some bridges to other communities where we may totally lack a presence… and where other networks might be inspired by our materials and give us a good spread for not much investment of energy.
I’m actually responding to another thread, but I thought it had more relevance to sustainability (http://voice-box.org.uk/2008/12/18/timetable-and-process-for-development-of-the-digital-mentors-bid/) as an addition to Gail’s good points.
@terry “What can we create or offer that would draw in and retain such people?”
Of all the people I can think of who are involved in what can be called digital mentoring, I can’t think of any means in which any of them have been recruited or retained. I don’t think it works like that. People get drawn in and they often become leaders in their communities (on or offline) simply by taking on a role themselves. People help others because they want to share the benefits they perceive themselves, it’s as simple as that.
What this project and others can do is create frameworks and, importantly, reduce the inequalities of access that mean that people in disconnected communities do not benefit from online access in the same way as others can. But ultimately, no amount of government funding can or should create a generation of digital mentors who are being managed by a central organisation.
I don’t see that digital mentoring needs to be a paid role, although there are plenty of infrastructure roles that do need to be paid. In addition, the more people who have digital engagement as part of their jobs, whether in the public, private or third sector, the better this will all become. At this stage, mentoring is the most effective way I can think of to support the growth of a culture of information-sharing, digital engagement, collaboration as well as individual enterprise, responsibility and leadership.