The 3i Summit is a unique process that taps into the dynamism and creativity of community leaders, great minds and change agents from multiple sectors to catalyze relationships and collaborate on tangible initiatives for positive community change. The summit is grassroots-driven, co-created and facilitated with partner organizations to address shared areas of community concern where collaborative action can make a difference and serve as a springboard for tangible community action toward desired outcomes.
3i is a continuous, interactive 5-stage process that builds momentum through a series of activities: co- creation through partners and Idea Salons, identifying initiatives building up to the Summit, collaborating for action at the Summit and post-Summit follow through on initiatives. Here is an outline of how this worked for the 2012 3i Summit on Sustainability in Ottawa.
Download the 3i Summit Process Document.
A Brief Outline of the Process
1) Co-Creation: Defining the framework
- Community leaders were brought together for a World Café discussion to identify what could be possible for community change through partnership collaboration. The group was asked to identify an issue/sector and citizens/groups were invited to step forward with a desire for change and a willingness to be a partner.
- A leader stepped forward from the environment sector and over a dozen local environmental NGO’s were were involved in two workshops to decide if there was an opportunity to collaborate for change and what some of the outcomes might look like.
- Partner organizations were asked to commit to Partnership Criteria.
- Core Funding and in kind donations were obtained to ensure core staff and expertise.
- 3i meetings were held with partners to define what the summit would accomplish and the best way to proceed. A core group defined Purpose, Principles, Process to underpin Program Development.
- Sub teams defined salons, program planning, communications and event logistics.
2) Consultation: Community input
- Lists of organizations and emails that could be interested in taking part across a wide range of sectors (environment, health, business, government, community orgs, arts/recreation, etc) was developed by the partners to be invited to participate.
- To seek input from the community to generate engagement, volunteer teams with facilitation expertise developed and conducted 4 Idea salons in different parts of the city.
- An Online Idea Salon using a crowdsourcing tool, Ideavibes, was on the website to collect ideas from the community and the salons toward developing initiatives to be bring to the Summit.
3) Building Initiatives: Developing Initiatives
- Through the Salons and direct outreach to groups in the community, there was a call for inititiaves to be submitted to the Program Committee.
- The focus on the 3i Summit is Taking Action so priority was on initiatives that were likely to have outcomes in the 3 areas: Infrastucture, Forums and Community Development Projects.
4) The 3i Summit: Two Days of Inspiration, Fun, Networking and Initiative Development
- An event organization team, promotion, registration, animation, volunteers, ideal venue.
5) Action Roll-Out and Next Steps:
- Post summit – Conducted a survey & held a reconnecting session to see the state of initiatives & steps to move ahead.
- Published and distributed booklet on the 30 summit initiatives: Moving Forward, Taking Action.
- Created a working group to continue the collaboration, communication and opportunities to connect.






