PEP1: Community Development / Public Relations / Social Engineering

I'm not sure this is on the PEP1 list, but I think it might be a good idea to add.

White Belt:
Meet your neighbors
Share stuff with neighbors (e.g. trading leftovers, giving someone with younger children the stuff your kids have grown out of)
Make five new friends
Identify the points of interaction in your community
Observe the social patterns in your community
Plan and host a one-off event in your community
Get at least ten people to come to a community event

Green Belt:
With the information gathered on the social patterns in your community, identify where a new point of interaction could be created or an existing one updated to be effective
Get ten people to meet a new person
Plan and host a recurring community event (have it occur at least five times)
Get at least ten people to show up on average to said recurring community event
Plan and host two one-off community events (with at least twenty people showing up)

Brown Belt:
Create or update a point of interaction in your community
Plan and host a recurring community event (occur at least ten times)
Get twenty people or more to show up on average to said recurring community event
Plan and host four one-off community events (with at least forty people showing up)


Black Belt:
Identify a need in your community, make a plan, and successfully execute the plan

I think this is an interesting idea!

On the permablitz website, they have a Designer's Guide, Facilitator's Guide, Hosts' Guide, and a Reporter's Guide for making the events happen and get noticed. I think these documents on their website may be useful.

This is a very good idea in my opinion.
I'd also like to add soft skills to this. Things such as problem solving, pitching and presentation, time management, critical thinking.
Many of us have multiple business activities where understanding and improving these skills could be invaluable.

If you're interested in having this here, let me know, and I'll sketch something out

Rus

Please tell us more Rus! May you elaborate? On which belts would you place these skills under? How would one be able to demonstrate these skills? The main way I see demonstration of the skills appearing is through doing a project.....

The skills can be for all (four?) belts.
And yes they would be practical.
presentation skills off the top of my head
white belt writing and delivering a presentation to one person
black belt to 250+ people?

We all know when we have communicated an idea correctly. Often just the awareness about where we are with these skills can inform us as to what we need to do to up our game, or when we are comfortable that we have reached a level of competency which is appropriate for our current situation.

Problem solving
white belt, Generate 10 realistic solutions for a problem and then evaluate them to find the best one
Black belt As above, but with a group of people larger than 50

This is what I do for my business, so I'm confident I can find a way for this to be useful for this group of people.
I'm very much more interested in hacking the (often bland) corporate activities, keeping what works, and helping people to find their own voice and enjoyment . As an example for communication, improving and enhancing people's authentic communication would be much more of the focus than learning powerpoint skills.
There's lots of other stuff here around which bits of branding is useful, how to present a business in line with your values, etc

I believe that it's people that make projects work and giving people the skills they need to leverage their technical knowledge to the fullest is where we can have a wider reach.
Joe Salatin is a great example of someone whose communication skills match his technical skills and the effect he has on people, and the world as a whole, is much greater than someone who mumbles into their shoes.


I'm seriously short on time for the forseeable (I said I wasn't going to take on any more projects!) but I'll commit to put in the time if there is sufficient interest from the community. There are lots of free resources available on the web that we could direct people to ( I have my own material but I'd rather not push that for obvious reasons), booklists podcasts etc. My vision is to develop a list of 4-6 ( 6-10) soft skills that people most want/ need, keeping the focus tight, and to structure the targets appropriately, with links to supporting materials, exercises and models.

Rus

Another soft skill that I think could be added to the list would charm- how to talk to people in such a way that they feel comfortable and open in one's presence. One idea for developing charm that was mentioned in the HuffingtonPost, in their article Operation Charisma, was to go out with a friend to a public place and take turns- one person chatting up a stranger, the other watching. Afterwards, a brief discussion is held about how well it went.

Albeit, it is talking with strangers, there really is not that much that can go wrong. We don't know them, they don't know us, we don't have to see each other again. However, it can get a whole lot better, too. We never know who we might find and what conversations may turn up.