Welcome to Three Supports for Community Development.
Allow me to introduce myself. My full name is Steven James Lawrence. I was born in Portland, Maine and have lived in Massachusetts since 1982.
Through the years, I have developed an interest in multiple fields, including film, theatre, philosophy, education, and the study of organizations. My formal training includes a Bachelor Arts in Theatre from Salem State University and a Masters Degree in Educational Transformation at the University of Massachusetts of Boston, which was a combination of training in both pedagogy and organizational change. Since the 1990s, I have had the fortune of combining all my interests and bringing them into the classroom as an educator in both public schools and in my current practice as an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology.
Alongside my career as an educator, I also developed experience and pursued training in organizational development, inter-cultural awareness, peace-making, dialogue and mediation. My experiences in these domains have helped me develop insights and understandings around human interactions and their impact on the mission of organizations, communities and projects. I am looking forward to sharing some of what I’ve learned on the Support Your Mission blog, and I hope you will have the opportunity to take a look at some of the entries.
Topics covered include the intersections of workplace health, public policy, healthy identity formation and institutional norms as they impact the realities of human lives on the ground. Of particular interest is the related theme of organizational cultures and how language, collaboration, and empathy each play a role in achieving an organization’s mission.
The following pages introduce a rubric I developed during my graduate training at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The rubric is called “The Three Supports for Community and Organizational Development.” If you have any feedback or responses to the writing, please feel free to email me at steven@supportyourmission.com.
Thanks for visiting.
NEXT PAGE: Introduction