Day job
I spend my days inside the philanthropic field, working at the seam where institutional money meets community reality. That vantage point sharpens the practice that lives on this page. I have seen what passes for listening when the foundation is the client. I have seen what becomes possible when the community is.
My work
Most of what gets called community engagement is institutional listening dressed up. Surveys built to satisfy grant requirements. Town halls structured so the answer is already decided. Feedback loops where the foundation acts, or doesn't, while the community waits.
Community listening is a different discipline. The community is the client. What residents are living through, what they are already doing about it, and what remains unmet: those are the questions. The findings come back to the community first, so the community can act on itself. Not a foundation responding for us. Us, responding for us.
This is liberation infrastructure. The lineage runs through Black agrarian tradition, cooperative economics, and the long history of communities building parallel power where the front door was closed to them. The methodology is older than the language used to describe it here.
How the work shows up
Different organizations need different things. The work carries multiple expressions; not a single service.
Structured feedback systems and software that capture what residents are experiencing, what is already being done about it, and what remains unmet. Built to belong to the community that uses it.
Helping community-rooted organizations build their own listening work instead of depending on outside evaluators to tell them what their people are saying.
Teachable forms of the work for in-house skill building. Listening as a skill an organization can hold itself.
Sharing the work in public as it develops. Letters, essays, and field notes that name what the work actually is.
The land is part of the work
Pariso Roots is not the brand wrapper around this work. The land, the goats, the pigs, the trees themselves; these are the work in another form. The same discipline of attention that gets applied to human community gets applied here too.
I wear thin-soled shoes when I move through the herd, so I feel the same ground tremble the goats feel. That is not metaphor. That is a way of life. Attention to the more-than-human community is part of the listening. Black agrarian tradition has always known this.
The integration of land, animals, and political work is not a new idea. It is my inheritance.
Project [RISE UP]
Project [RISE UP] is a civic web app built to center the Black community and any other resident of Anderson County, SC whose voice isn't making it to the table. It lets community members tell local government what matters most to them, and stay connected to the civic life of their neighborhood.
The data belongs to the community. It never gets sold. It gets used to hold elected officials accountable and to show funders exactly what Anderson County residents need.
Community Needs Assessment
Collects areas of concern directly from residents while connecting them to their local representatives. The starting point for community voice.
Open AssessmentCommunity Infrastructure
Takes the assessment further: building the local civic infrastructure needed for residents to stay connected, organized, and engaged over time.
Open PrototypeGet in touch
If this work connects to what you are doing, reach out. Engagements are selective; the focus is always on work that is community-led and liberation-oriented.
I do not take on community listening work inside Anderson County, where Project [RISE UP] organizes.
cjblu [at] parisoroots [dot] org