(Washington, DC) I’ll be the guest on the next “confab” (conference call) of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation: 2-3pm Eastern (11-noon Pacific) on Thursday, June 12th. You can sign up here to reserve your spot for this free call. I’ll be discussing We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For. I’ll focus on explaining this, the basic model of the book:
The post an NCDD confab about We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For appeared first on Peter Levine.
We are excited to share with you that our organizational partners at the Davenport Institute have opened the application process for their 2014 Public Engagement Grant Program. The grant is perfect for NCDD members, and we highly encourage you to apply before the September 12 deadline. You can read more about the program below or find out more by clicking here.
If you have a public engagement project that could use some consulting help, now is the time to apply for the seventh annual Davenport Institute Public Engagement Grant Program! This year we will be awarding $25,000 in funded consulting services to cities, counties, special districts, and civic organizations looking to conduct legitimate public processes on issues ranging from budgets to land use to public safety to water policy.
The application deadline is Friday, September 12 and decisions will be announced by October 1.
The Davenport Institute’s Public Engagement Grants are service grants, funding well-qualified consultants selected jointly by grantees and the Institute to work with grantees on facilitated public forums.
This year the Davenport Institute will be awarding 2-4 grants, offering up to $10,000 per grant to be paid directly by the Institute to an approved consultant. The total amount of grant awards for 2014 will be around $25,000 in funded consulting services.
Prior to beginning their public engagement campaign, grantees will receive training and consultation from the Davenport Institute to build understanding and support for the civic engagement effort among administrative and elected officials.
Davenport senior staff and consultants will then work with grantees to design public forum sessions and will facilitate deliberations among residents, stakeholders, and government representatives.
From difficult budget decisions to tough land use problems, municipal and civic institutions have recognized that legitimately engaging their citizens – from discovering their informed opinions, to inviting their participation in actual solutions – should be a pragmatic priority. Still, the tight budgets that most require these public discussions can also preclude them when municipalities decide that engaging residents is just “too expensive.”
Starting in 2008 (then conducted through Common Sense California), our grants have been used to support cities, counties, special districts and civic organizations as they have endeavored to engage their residents on a variety of issues.
Here’s a small sampling of the efforts we have supported:
See our application criteria here and our online application here.
Q1: Does the proposed public process need to occur immediately?
A: No. Most of our granted projects have taken place within one year of the application date.
Q2: Can we recommend a facilitator or web platform to receive support from the Grant Program?
A: Yes. Again, the purpose of our grants is to fund participatory (as opposed to “PR”) projects. Of course, we’d like to interview your recommended facilitator, but we’ve worked with designated consultants before. This actually helps us build our own “rolodex” of consultants!
Q3: Is the Davenport training an added expense?
A: No. Training for the grant recipient is now an integral part of the Grant Program, and is offered as part of the grant. All expenses – including travel – are assumed by Davenport.
Q4: How many grantees do you anticipate this year?
A: We tend to support between 2-4 grantees each year with the Grant Program.
Q5: Do you support “capacity building” efforts like “block captain”, “neighborhood watch”, “citizen academy”?
A: No. As a practice, the grants are intended to support actual public projects around “live” issues – from budgets to land use. We find with the training added, these grants build “civic capacity” through actual engagement.
The criteria are straightforward and the online application form is easy. After reviewed by members of our Advisory Council, our 2014 grantees will be announced by early October.
Please feel free to contact Ashley Trim at ashley.trim@pepperdine.edu or at 310-506-6878 with any questions.
You can find more information on the Davenport Institute’s grant programs at http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenport-institute/grants.
So, I had tea with Michelle Obama. No, really, this happened:
I sat next to Congresswoman Lois Frankel (D-FL), who was delighted that this was “a real tea!” 
The tea was part of bus tour led by Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to promote her economic agenda for women and families: When Women Succeed, America Succeeds.
About a dozen congresswomen from around the country were in attendance. Congressman Mike Capuano also made an appearance, but he wasn’t there for the photo.
And, of course, first lady Michelle Obama was there:
And she was a great speaker.
Like many of the other speakers, she spoke about the important role of women in democracy.
It is not acceptable that women are systematically paid less than men.
It is not acceptable that child care is unaffordable – even out of reach for some families.
It is not acceptable that many people, especially women, do not have paid sick leave.
It is not acceptable that women are underrepresented at the highest levels of power – including elected office.
The world is getting better, but there is more work to be done. So, let’s get it done.
So, I had tea with Michelle Obama. No, really, this happened:
I sat next to Congresswoman Lois Frankel (D-FL), who was delighted that this was “a real tea!”
The tea was part of bus tour led by Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to promote her economic agenda for women and families: When Women Succeed, America Succeeds.
About a dozen congresswomen from around the country were in attendance. Congressman Mike Capuano also made an appearance, but he wasn’t there for the photo.
And, of course, first lady Michelle Obama was there:
And she was a great speaker.
Like many of the other speakers, she spoke about the important role of women in democracy.
It is not acceptable that women are systematically paid less than men.
It is not acceptable that child care is unaffordable – even out of reach for some families.
It is not acceptable that many people, especially women, do not have paid sick leave.
It is not acceptable that women are underrepresented at the highest levels of power – including elected office.
The world is getting better, but there is more work to be done. So, let’s get it done.
It’s probably too late for most of us to attend, but this Friday through Sunday, June 6-8, Pixelache Helsinki 2014 will host an international two-day trans-disciplinary event on “The Commons.”
Apart from keynote lectures planned in advance, the agenda of activities of activities at Camp Pixelache – especially the participatory workshops – will be an "unconference" -- i.e., determined by the attendees themselves at the beginning of the event. Attendance is free of charge.
The event will be held on Vartiosaari, a nature island surrounded by eastern suburbs of Helsinki. The organizers note that the island “is currently under-threat of full-scale residential development by Helsinki City Planning Department, and there is a grassroots campaign to protect its particular qualities, in which artists & cultural practitioners are involved. We are hoping that the occasion of Camp Pixelache can also provide a discussion forum around Helsinki-Commons issues.”
First of all, I love the logo for Camp Pixcelache (see below). Striking!
For our June 24th Tech Tuesday, we’re pleased to have Brian Burt, CEO and founder of MaestroConference, host a session that lets us experience major new changes in their platform and talk together about how it could support upcoming projects we each may have. Registration is open now, so reserve your spot today!
Many of you are familiar with MaestroConference, as we’ve used it numerous times for our online activities (our last two Tech Tuesdays, a couple confab calls, and a few special calls), thanks in large part to NCDD member Ben Roberts, who has served as our host for the calls. MaestroConference is also well-known in our field because of its alignment with group process techniques — including its unique ability to enable break-out groups to form on conference calls.
MaestroConference is the leader in “Social Conferencing” technology serving more than 5 million participants, and is launching a new “Visual Interface” which allows people to see the faces of the people they’re talking to, edit documents together, leverage crowdsourcing applications, exercise the “law of two feet” and more.
For our June Tech Tuesday (on the 24th from 1-2pm Eastern / 10-11am Pacific), Brian will host a discussion leveraging the new Social Webinar platform for conveners and facilitators about enhancing interactivity and engagement with virtual conversations. Participants will experience break out groups with peer advice to examine how conversations with scalable breakouts can include the voices you want at the table, and address any challenges you have found in the past with technology-supported engagement.
This FREE event will take place on Tuesday, June 24 from 1-2pm ET / 10-11am PT. You do not have to be a member of NCDD to participate in our Tech Tuesday learning events.
The third edition of Michael Edwards’ invaluable book Civil Society is newly out, and Mike makes a strong argument on OpenDemocracy.net that draws from his book.
He notes that nonprofit organizations are growing (by almost all measures) and offering significant benefits to the people and communities that they serve directly. There are, for example, 3.3 million registered charities in India. In our own work, we find that the number of nonprofits in a US community, adjusted for population, predicts that community’s economic performance (holding many other factors constant).
And yet, as Mike Edwards notes, the world is slipping backward on many fronts, as “economic inequality is rising, democracies are being hollowed out, climate change is worsening, and discrimination based on race, gender, ability and sexual orientation remains endemic.”
These are the kinds of issues that are traditionally addressed by governments. In turn, governments are helpful when broad-based social movements hold them accountable. (Benign elites are possible–but rare and usually short-lived–and, by definition, they cannot address a problem like the hollowing-out of democracy.)
Civil society–defined as an array of nonprofit organizations–can support broad-based social movements:
When one looks at the few times in history when civil society has functioned as a powerful and lasting moral and political lever – like the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s – large numbers of people became active in translating ethical action into power structures at every level, from the family to the courts and corporations.
In this sense, civil society is like an iceberg, with the peaks of protest rising above the waterline and the great mass of everyday citizen action hidden underneath. When the two are connected – when street protests are backed up by long-term action in every community, bank, business, local government, church or mosque, temporary gains in equality and diversity have more chance of becoming permanent shifts in power and public norms. In that respect it’s not the Arab or any other ‘Spring’ that really makes the difference, but what happens in every other season, of every other year, across every generation.
Unfortunately these episodes of large-scale, joined-up action are quite rare, and the long-term trend has been the opposite, at least in Europe and North America.
Edwards sees two functions for civil society at its best: connecting everyday local action to policy, and building human solidarity across lines of class and race so that citizens support private and public action in the common good. Neither is achieved by civil society understood as a set of social enterprises or social networks. Instead, we need civil society as coalitions of organizations committed to political and social change.
Edwards concludes that “the strength of civil society is declining even as its size continues to expand. … But since civil societies are ours to lose, they are also ours to reclaim, to refresh and re-energize.”
(I make somewhat similar arguments in my qualms about a bond market for philanthropy and can nonprofits solve big problems?)
The post Mike Edwards on civil society appeared first on Peter Levine.
NCDD’s sister organization, the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation (C2D2), is hosting a great webinar this Thursday, June 5th, starting at 12pm Eastern/9am Pacific that we wanted to make sure you heard about. The webinar will focus on learning from a climate deliberation initiative in Alberta and will be facilitated by three NCDD members. You can read more about or find out more by clicking here, and make sure to register today by clicking here.
This webinar will provide an opportunity to learn about the work of Alberta Climate Dialogue (ABCD). This five year initiative (2010-2015) brings together a group of researchers and practitioners who are exploring how citizen deliberation can contribute to shifting engagement and policy on climate change locally and internationally.
This webinar will be an opportunity to discuss in detail what is being learned about deliberative dialogue practice from the following three deliberations:
In the spirit of the ABCD collaboration, the webinar will be facilitated by three of its members:
ABCD’s work is funded by a Community-University Research Alliance grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as contributions from universities, governments, and NGOs that are partners. Deliberative events are co-funded with government, civil society partners, and further grants.
You can find the original version of this post at http://c2d2.ca/c2d2-webinar-climate-change-dialogue-and.