METHODOLOGY
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
Community leaders are not representatives; their titles are coordinators. These coordinators don't make decisions for our communities, but instead convey and facilitate the implementation of the decisions made democratically during community meetings organized by each ethnic group. In the graphic displayed below, the top segment called “Customers” represents the larger community or the different ethnic groups. Our belief is that CEOs and staff cannot truly serve their communities when they are seated on top of them like in the standard pyramid.
THE METHODOLOGY
The typical organizational structure used across the country is, in many ways, similar to a European feudalism, imperialistic, and hierarchical model. The Winooski Parent & Student project is inverting the “Top-Bottom” approach where few (privileged) decided for the many (disadvantaged). The continuous development of social governance practices and the role of public participation in community planning has received increasing attention. With the Winooski Parents & Students Project we show how you can introduce the process of constructing a public participation system and an inverted pyramid model of public participation. In addition, this project also implements collaborative workshops among others as a method of community planning which allows for multi-stakeholder participation and joint consultation. These workshops adopt a flexible and diverse approach in response to problems and needs during the process of community construction and development. It mobilizes and organizes residents and community organizations to participate in community construction and governance. Collaborative workshops provide new working ideas and practical solutions for participatory community planning in both top-down (government-led) and bottom-up (citizen-led) settings in our community
The top-bottom inverted power pyramid
