Finding Communities That Work: A 3 Month Exploration
Plus a deep-dive into an online course I took that prioritized community over content
Organizations build community for all sorts of reasons - they want to strengthen their following, level up their marketing, or they think it’s nice to have. However, there are some that do it because they believe building community is fundamental to helping their audience reach their goals.
In August 2021, I became intensely curious about organizations like that, checking out everything from local government to community movie theaters to storytelling events. For the next 3 months, I explored over 20 in-person communities across the Bay Area.
Over the next few posts, I’ll be sharing with you the 4 most intriguing organizations I encountered, their community building styles, and the lessons we can learn from each. This week, I’ll be starting with APALI’s Civic Leadership Program, an online course that cares more about connecting students than teaching content.
APALI’s Civic Leadership Program
When I signed up to participate in the Civic Leadership Program, I never expected to come away with the life perspective shifts that I did. I knew we’d be learning about ways to get involved in local civic leadership. But the whole course was going to be online, and I was skeptical of how much I’d get out of a weekly 3 hour Zoom meeting—especially when the pandemic had long worn down my enthusiasm for video calls.
This was the first year that the course was done online. Yet APALI (Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute) was able to accomplish something that most online courses never do - they got me to care deeply about the course topic and the people in my class. In 4 months, APALI created a space where people connected to each other, took away life long learnings, and kept coming back - and it was all online.
Investing in community to help people learn
APALI’s main goal for this class was to “build a sustainable leadership pipeline for Asian Americans, Latinx Americans, and under-represented groups in government, nonprofit, education, and business sectors”. To get there, they needed to convince us that 1) we are worthy of being civic leaders 2) serving others sustainably is important—and we need to first take care of ourselves and 3) we’re not in this leadership journey alone.
Lectures, speaker panels, and readings cannot teach these lessons on their own. So APALI took another approach. They focused on building community first and teaching content second. With all the hard work we’d be doing reflecting on ourselves and reshaping our views on leadership, we’d need a strong community to make this process approachable and fun.
Community Fast Facts
Type: Cohort-based Online Course
Size: ~40 students
Who’s in it: Primarily Bay Area residents who are Asian, Latinx, or part of other underrepresented groups in government and social services sectors.
The Shared Goal: Learn how we can be effective civic leaders.
Why it Works: It’s extremely powerful to explore your leadership style and dreams in a supportive group that looks like you and is from all walks of life. It’s the perfect environment to re-shape your beliefs on what type of leader you can be in the future.
The program’s secret sauce
In just a few weeks, APALI constructed a community that people were excited to be a part of. Here are a few of the things they did that really helped the community come together.
They used an opening ritual to bring us into the space.
This class wasn’t about mindfulness. Yet even so, APALI opened each class with 5 minutes of joint community breathing. When work, social life, and class all happen on the computer, it can be hard to context switch from one mode to another. This simple exercise helped me mentally set aside all the other things in my life, so that I could be present and ready to engage.
They prioritized us over curriculum content.
We had entire classes where the focus was just on us. In week 2, when we were still strangers, we shared the figurative masks we wore in our daily lives and what we hid underneath. Another week, we asked each other “what is your work?” over and over again, pushing each other to think beyond our job titles and get to the root of our motivations. When 2021 Spring’s rise in anti-Asian hate was happening, and I didn’t know how to grieve, the course instructors paused the curriculum and gave us space to talk. In this class, our well-being was more important than getting through a list of facts. By giving us time to share deep emotions, the course gave us permission to bring our full selves to class, which brought us all closer together.
They designed opportunities for us to connect and relate.
Breakout sessions were core to the class experience, and each one was intentionally designed to foster connection. Each week, we’d be put into new breakout groups that we’d keep for the whole class. This gave our groups time to warm up by discussing educational content and get deeper by sharing our personal stories. We also weren’t thrown in there to fend for ourselves. Each breakout room had a student facilitator to help guide the conversation. We assigned a person to keep time to make sure everyone had equal opportunity to share. The room setup gave us space to be heard, find support, and form strong peer connections.
Besides breakout rooms, we were heavily encouraged to support one another by using the Zoom chat box. If you heard something you resonated with or wanted to acknowledge someone’s courage, you could put it in the chat and have that side conversation. The chat box made lectures and group discussions feel like a conversation. They felt alive.
They taught us how to listen.
Halfway through the course, APALI had us try something they called group consultations. We were put into groups of six. One person has 5 minutes to share a leadership challenge they need help with. During this time, everyone else listens.
What makes this exercise particularly interesting is what happens next. For the next 10 minutes, the group discuss the issues, but you are not allowed to solve it. You cannot provide advice. You cannot share a personal story, no matter how related you think it might be. All you can do is share your observations and ask more questions.
The experience was fascinating. It was not only weird to be able to monologue without interruption, but it was even weirder for the conversation topic to stay focused on my experience. No one tried to fit their own experiences into my story. They just wanted to know more. And because of that, I felt heard and acknowledged.
This listening lesson was another turning point for the class. It told me that my voice matters. And the support I felt from my peers deepened further.
If the community fizzles, did the program still work?
By the end of 12 weeks, APALI had built a unified and supportive community, and they succeeded in getting a group of people to care deeply about civic leadership. We were all so excited about the bonds we had made and the leadership goals we had set. We talked about how we wanted to keep this momentum going and how one day, we’d meet in real life.
But when the course concluded, sadly the community did too. We had no structure or leadership to follow. So after one virtual hangout, that was it. There was no reunion, no followup sessions, no bi-yearly life check-in as we had all agreed to in that last class. And as my connection to these people faded, so too did my enthusiasm for civic leadership.
The Civic Leadership Program was impactful because its student community helped people move forward on their leadership goals. But if the community falls apart after the class ends, then how impactful really is the class? I definitely learned some things and made some friends, but did APALI really succeed in building their leadership pipeline?
I sometimes wonder if they let us go too soon. They had already done the hard work of bringing us together. What if they had maintained what they had created? They could have organized gatherings for our class, connected us to previous class years, people who may be further along in their leadership goals. If APALI had continued to nurture the community they’d created, they just might have kept civic leadership top of mind for all of us. And that would have created a truly formidable leadership pipeline.