Hello SCC staff!

As Paige and I announced this morning in the All-staff meeting, we have a draft document we’d like you to look over in the next week s time and interest allow.  If we collectively like it well enough, it’s on its way to the December SCC meeting (maybe the January one if needed) to request a draft be sent out to districts for comment. 

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGRJieyaVo/4fZrIjUDLJyxqyQkJXB5aw/edit

‍We will need your comments by close of business 11/4.

Two things to note:  First, while it is a requirement of the Climate Commitment Act that we adopt a Community Engagement Plan, we’ve taken the approach of creating a document that can help support and improve community engagement around any type of funding or outreach event. Second, it’s not a top-down, directive plan. Like the provisional plan, itis a toolkit, a guide, or a how-to manual. Community engagement should be very situationally specific and the hope is that this can help us all decide when and how best to engage. 

We are open to questions, ideas, happy to have a call, jump on teams to talk through any suggestions or edits you might have. You can also make comments right in the document. 

Finally, a small disclaimer, it’s not quite finished, we’ll be working on buttoning up details this week while comments come in, you will see a couple of placeholders and we are still adding examples and links —but the meat of it is finished and it’s a great time to get your input and ideas. In particular,  we’d love to find more natural resource/conservation examples of great or innovative community engagement and/or tools that could help folks who are doing that work, but please give us any feedback you have.  

Here’s some context and background on the project:

A little over a year ago the SCC approved a provisional Community Engagement Plan. That document was really just a template provided by the Environmental Justice Council (EJC) adopted it as a placeholder. The commissioners charged us to work with districts to rewrite/rework it to better fit what we do.  This is what we’ve built in response to that charge. Paige and I put together a team of (it varied over time) 10 to 14 CD staff, mostly outreach professionals with a few district managers attending when they could for high level input and political insight.  We were careful to include small and large district, eastside and westside.  That group has been meeting regularly since the spring and have taken a couple of source documents from other agencies, pulled what they liked then added tools they found useful and other conservation district-oriented content. It’s designed to be brief, practical and action-oriented.

Thank you!

-Jean

Jean Fike (she/her) Puget Sound Regional Manager

Washington State Conservation Commission

2021 E. College Way, Suite 203 Mount Vernon WA 98273-2373

Cell:360-764-0533 | JFike@scc.wa.gov

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