Ending Homelessness in Florida's Big Bend
Ending Homelessness in Florida's Big Bend
Thank you to everyone in the Big Bend community who joined us for the SIE Intergenerational Talent Readiness Sprint Community Presentations. Your participation reflected a shared commitment to exploring new ways of thinking about the complex challenge of people experiencing homelessness in the Big Bend.
As our communities continue to navigate increasing complexity, meaningful progress requires more than relying on past approaches. By bringing together students, emerging leaders, seasoned professionals, and community partners, we began building our collective capacity to approach this challenge through empathy, shared values, adaptive leadership, and collaboration across generations.
The services and programs available to people experiencing homelessness are vital, but they are largely “technical” solutions. They aren’t designed on their own to address the complex “adaptive challenges” of homelessness, the kind that continue to evolve alongside our communities. Addressing these challenges takes more than technical fixes. By strengthening our Mindsets (ways of thinking), Heartsets (ways of being), and Problem-Solving Frameworks (ways of doing), we can expand our collective capacity to respond in new ways.
Over the course of the Sprint weekend, three intergenerational teams framed, ideated, reframed, and prototyped solutions to three distinct “How Might We” questions:
As one participant, Maria Paula McIntyre Nwenyi, a recent FSU public policy graduate and member of an SIE Intergenerational Team, put it: the experience introduced new problem-solving tools centered on empathy, common ground, and shared values, challenging the assumption that solutions already exist or can’t be tackled collectively.
The presentations were not final solutions. They were prototypes designed to spark learning, invite feedback, and explore new possibilities for our regional response. These early concepts represent the beginning of an ongoing conversation, and the teams closed by challenging the community to get involved in testing and building out this new work.
We’re building a Whole of Community approach to homelessness in the Big Bend. Are you in? Join our team and help shape what comes next.
For more information, check out the full event recap.
Special thanks to our venue and volunteer partner, the Challenger Learning Center, and to our community donors: Intell Essential Intelligence, LLC, Dunkin’, Slim Chickens, and Krispy Kreme.