Act 2 Reflection

Because leadership had already been established in Flamingo Crescent, we were able to speed up the mobilization process and developed strong working relationships with the community leaders, allowing our team to facilitate significant developments within the community.

Knowing the time limitation, we hit the ground running, condensing what had taken two weeks in 7de Laan into one enlightening name tag activity.  We wasted no time meeting with the project manager the following day and touring two sites in different stages of reblocking with community leaders to gain insights for application in Flamingo Crescent.

With a strong sense of the work ahead of all of us, the community leaders and our project team paired up to begin preparing for the quickly approaching breaking ground plan.  Our group broke up into four main committees, Crèche networking, parks and gardens, website, and CAD.  Each committee took a lead role in facilitating the community’s preparation for reblocking.

The crèche networking team quickly realized that erecting a physical structure in the little time we had here would be impossible and rather focused their efforts in networking to create a foundation for the community to build from.  The parks and gardens team began organizing various mobile park and garden elements that could bring tangible progress to the community and spark a sense of accomplishment whose momentum could carry on after we leave.  The website team focused on documenting the efforts in Flamingo Crescent in order to successfully replicate and perfect as reblocking is still a new concept and Flamingo Crescent is a pioneering effort with unique challenges.  And the CAD team, working closely with community leaders, helped to reorganize the structures in order to optimize accessibility and public open spaces.

In each team, the students settled into facilitation roles, allowing the community to take ownership of their project with greater drive and urgency.

Moving Forward

Since moving to Flamingo Crescent, our team has been able to make significant progress mobilizing the community and finding our role as facilitators in the greater process.  Moving forward, our focus will transition to more tangible works in each team.  The crèche networking team hopes to identify solid funding and a construction plan in order to ensure the community can build a crèche once we’ve gone.  The parks and gardens team plans to facilitate community building days for the construction of several park and gardens elements.  The website team hopes to write several user friendly interactive documents to record the community’s process. And the CAD team hopes to finalize a layout with community leaders and seek community approval before submitting designs to the city.  Although, our roles of facilitators will not change, in the final weeks we have high hopes to accomplish significant head way in Flamingo Crescent.