100pts Refine your search to find information about your community's comprehensive and zoning plans, permit application process, and other information and procedures. Determine what steps you would need to take to build a new structure, business, or development in your community. Why are these steps important in ensuring the appropriate development for your community?

Now, use a map to plan your own city or community. What do you think would be required to have a good place for people to live, work, and play? Remember to keep social justice, equity, and environmental protection in mind as well. Consider the natural resources and economic basis for your proposed community.

Explanation:

Have you had the motivation to mobilize your community to address a problem that affects the local population, but just not known how to begin? You might wonder; “How do I investigate the problem?”, “Whom do I involve in the strategies to address the problem?”, “How do I successfully facilitate a group of diverse representatives from a community to reach consensus about a common vision and the actions that will turn ideas into results?”

This tool has the answers to these and other important questions. It will prepare you to lead your community in action planning.

WHAT IS ACTION PLANNING?

The overall goal of action planning is to increase your community’s ability to work together to affect conditions and outcomes that matter to its residents—and to do so both over time and across issues of interest.

As your community works towards a broad vision of health for all, creating supportive conditions for change requires comprehensive efforts among diverse sectors of the community. These include health organizations, faith communities, schools, and businesses. Representatives of each sector come together to form a community coalition. Your community coalition can strive to influence systems changes—programs, policies, and practices that can enhance the community’s capacity to be a healthy environment.

A community coalition initiates its work by generating an action plan.

An action plan outlines what should happen to achieve the vision for a healthy community. Desirable changes and proposed activities (action steps), timelines, and assignment of accountability provide a detailed road map for collaborators to follow.

HOW DOES ACTION PLANNING HELP A COMMUNITY?

REGARDLESS OF THE COMPLEXITY OF THE PROBLEM AT HAND WITHIN YOUR COMMUNITY, ACTION PLANNING HELPS YOU:

Understand the community’s perception of both the issue at hand and its potential solutions

Assure inclusive and integrated participation across community sectors in the planning process

Build consensus on what can and should be done based on the community’s unique assets and needs

Specify concrete ways in which members of the community coalition can take action

The list above describes how an action plan helps a community’s sectors and residents within those sectors work together to achieve a common vision. This tool will address each item and provide guidance for your action planning work that lies ahead.

WHY IS ACTION PLANNING IMPORTANT?

Proper planning of any initiative is critical for yielding the best results or outcomes possible. An action plan, while a significant investment of time and energy, can be an effective tool that grounds all collaborators with a common purpose. Developing an action plan is a critical first step toward ensuring project success.

An action plan assures that:

No detail is overlooked

Proposed action steps are feasible and/or realistic

Collaborators follow through with their commitments

Measurable activities are documented and evaluated

Overall, action planning is important because it provides a reference point with a detailed time line and assignment of accountability for accomplishing tasks along the path to making a difference.

Research findings of the Center for Community Health and Development suggest that there are a number of factors that appear to have a positive effect on rates of community and system change—and one of those includes action planning:

Analyzing Information

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