New EvDem Documentary on Youth Mental Health Dialogue

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

We hope you will take a moment to read about a great project that our organizational partners at Everyday Democracy are working on with a New Mexico youth organization called Generation Justice. Their new documentary is helping young people have the difficult but needed conversations about mental health in connection with the NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions initiative. We hope you’ll take a moment to read about their work or find the original post from EvDem here.

When the Mask Comes Off, produced by the youth media organization Generation Justice, is a video documentary featuring young people from New Mexico discussing their experiences of living with mental illness. We hear stories of struggle on their journey from misperception and alienation toward self-acceptance and healing. The documentary comes with adaptable discussion guides for use in communities and schools.

Generation Justice Executive Director Roberta Rael said, “We want to make sure that young people have a voice in the discussions about mental health and that young people contribute to the change that is needed.” View the video trailer here:

When the Mask Comes Off is a partnership between Generation Justice and Everyday Democracy, a national organization working with communities to create positive change by providing tools, advice and strategies that help make democracy real for everyone.

Everyday Democracy answered the call of President Barack Obama for a National Dialogue on Mental Health and helped establish Creating Community Solutions to help local communities enter the national conversation. In July 2013, Albuquerque became one of the first cities to launch a multi-year initiative to bring people into dialogue as part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health.

At the launch event on July 20, hundreds of residents across the community participated in dialogue and identified a priority to expand mental health resources for young people and to create opportunities for youth to talk about mental health. Subsequent neighborhood dialogues throughout the region have also identified that priority. The release of When the Mask Comes Off is a step in fulfilling that need.

Martha McCoy, executive director of Everyday Democracy, said, “Bringing young people’s voices into this critical conversation has surfaced as a priority in community dialogues across the United States. When the Mask Comes Off will open the door for that difficult conversation.”

See the full version of the film.

View and download the discussion guide for schools.

View and download the discussion guide for communities.

The original version of this post from Everyday Democracy can be found at http://everyday-democracy.org/news/young-people-talk-about-living-mental-illness-new-documentary-when-mask-comes#.U6HZaPldUlp.

National Dialogue on Mental Health Turns 1!

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

A little over one year ago, on June 3rd, President Obama called for a national dialogue on mental health. Since then, the alliance of organizations running Creating Community Solutions (including NCDD) have been finding creative ways to get Americans talking about mental health in their communities.

It has been quite the year, with highs and lows and plenty of pleasant surprises along the way. Check out our Creating Community Solutions tag for all the NCDD posts on the project, and definitely explore the CCS website if you haven’t already.

As part of the project’s effort to link hundreds of community dialogues to action, CCS has been offering educational webinars. Visit www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/resources and scroll down the page to “Training Opportunities,” where you’ll find the following webinars archived and ready for you to view on demand:

Local Education Agency Grant Opportunities in Mental Health
State Education Agency Grant opportunities in Mental Health
Preventing mental health problems and identifying issues early by connecting child serving systems
Text, Talk, Act & Connect!
“Now is the Time” Project AWARE State Educational Agency Grants

See many more resources for holding dialogues on mental health at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/resources, and check out all the write-ups from the dialogues that have taken place at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/outcomes.

Open Government Needs Public Trust

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

The piece below comes from the Gov. 2.0 Watch blog, a project of our organizational partners at the Davenport Institute. The reflections shared on building trust in government as a critical component of public engagement and open government initiatives are good food for thought, and we encourage you to read more below or find the original post here.

In the wake of recent scandals involving California lawmakers, this CA Fwd interview with Leon Panetta is a needed reminder of the importance of integrity in public service. Ed Coghlan comments:

Three months into 2014 and three California State Senators have had brushes with the law. Needless to say, public confidence in elected officials is shaken.

It’s understandable, but like any setback in life, it’s also an opportunity to reflect and change for the better.

Now is the time for our elected officials to enact immediate and meaningful reform in response to alleged state-level corruption that has gotten national media attention. Only then will public trust in government be on the road to recovery.

CA Fwd is attempting to “catalyze a conversation on rebuilding public confidence in government,” and released a roadmap called The Path Toward Trust in April. More information is available here.

The Huffington Post published a related article last month by Gavin Newsom and Zachary Bookman, highlighting successes in the “Open Government movement” in Palo Alto, Bell, San Francisco, and the California State Lands Commission, that they argue have helped to increase public trust and civic engagement:

As a sector, government typically embraces technology well-behind the consumer curve. This leads to disheartening stories, like veterans waiting months or years for disability claims due to outdated technology or the troubled rollout of the Healthcare.gov website. This is changing.

Cities and states are now the driving force in a national movement to harness technology to share a wealth of government information and data. Many forward thinking local governments now provide effective tools to the public to make sense of all this data.

New platforms can transform data from legacy systems into meaningful visualizations. Instant, web-based access to this information not only saves time and money, but also helps government make faster and better decisions. This allows them to serve their communities and builds trust with citizens.

You can find the original version of this post at http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenport-institute/gov20watch/index.php/2014/04/public-trust-open-government.

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation a key player in Thursday’s Text Talk Act

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

We’re excited to announce that Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation is partnering with Creating Community Solutions to promote youth participation in Thursday’s Text Talk Act event! How cool is that?

We hope many of you are planning on participating on Thursday. For those of you still on the fence, please join in and hold at least one TTA conversation. All you need is 3 people, a smartphone, and about an hour, anytime on the 24th. Anyone can participate, though involving young people is especially encouraged.

If you are planning on hosting a Text Talk Act conversation on Thursday, do us a favor and add yourself to the Creating Community Solutions map! After logging in/creating an account on the Creating Community Solutions site, click on the “Add your dialogue to the map” button under the “Dialogues” tab — or just click here).

Learn more about Text Talk Act here, and sign up today.

NCDD is part of the collaboration running the Creating Community Solutions national dialogue effort aimed at tackling mental health issues in our communities, along with these other NCDDers: National Institute for Civil Discourse, Everyday Democracy, National Issues Forums Institute, AmericaSpeaks and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Check out all of our previous posts on Creating Community Solutions here.

April 2014 Confab Call on “Text, Talk, Act”

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Andy Fluke

Last Wednesday, NCDD hosted its April 2014 Confab Call with featured guests Matt Leighninger and Mike Smith talking about the innovative project known as Text Talk Act. If you missed the confab and are interested in learning more, you can now listen to the entire conversation — or look over the collaborative document participants created during the Confab Call — at the links below.

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As part of our role in the National Dialogue on Mental Health project Creating Community Solutions, NCDD and our partners have been experimenting with how the fun and convenience of text messaging can be leveraged to scale up face-to-face dialogue — especially among young people.

The first round of Text Talk Act took place on December 5, and round two is coming up on April 24 (and we hope you’re planning to participate!). Here’s what you can do to learn more…

Listen to the audio from the April 9, 2014 Confab Call.
Read over the archive of collaborative doc on Hackpad.com)
Participate in the April 24th “Text Talk Act” event!

You can also learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and other events (including our upcoming National Conference in Reston, VA) in our Event Section.

Introducing our fabulous youth organizers for Text Talk Act

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Creating Community Solutions is pleased to announce that we’ve teamed up with Active Minds, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation, and our other partners (NCDD is one of them) to identify some fantastic young people across the U.S. who will be helping organize Text Talk Act events in their communities.

We asked them to send us selfies, and you can check out their brief bios here.

Hopefully you already know all about Text Talk Act from our previous postings and recent confab call on the project, but in case you don’t, Text Talk Act is an innovative event taking place on April 24th (next Thursday). Thousands of people across the country will participate by (1) getting together in small groups of 4 or 5 people and (2) texting into 89800 to get polling questions and discussion questions sent to them by text.

In other words, this is texting-enabled face-to-face dialogue. We’re experimenting with how the fun and convenience of text messaging can be leveraged to scale up face-to-face dialogue — especially among young people. And we hope all of you are planning to take part!

Learn more about Text Talk Act here, and sign up today.

Last chance to sign up for tomorrow’s confab on Text Talk Act!

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Don’t forget to register for tomorrow’s free confab call on Text Talk Act! From 2-3pm Eastern (11-noon Pacific), we’ll be talking with NCDD members Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and Mike Smith of United Americans about this innovative project they’ve cooked up for Creating Community Solutions – the National Dialogue on Mental Health project that NCDD has been involved in with our partners NICD, Everyday Democracy, the DDC, NIFI, and AmericaSpeaks over the past year.

Text Talk Act uses text messaging to guide young people (and folks of all ages, really) through a face-to-face dialogue with 3 or 4 others on mental health.

Hip pracademics like Matt who are on the leading edge of this work call this blending “thin engagement” (texting, online ideation, etc. that is quick-and-easy but can reach the masses) with “thick engagement” (face-to-face dialogue and deliberation, which we all know takes more time and resources but has higher quality returns). It’s important for all of us to consider how we can use online and mobile technology to support face-to-face engagement, and learning the ins-and-outs of this project will help you consider the possibilities.

Read the full announcement about tomorrow’s confab here, or go ahead and sign up now…

Sorry - this event is over so the form has been closed. Peruse the posts at http://ncdd.org/tag/confab-archives to access archives from our confab calls and tech tuesdays.

Register Now for our April Confab on Text Talk Act

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Join us Wednesday, April 9th for our next NCDD “Confab Call.” We’ll be talking with NCDD members Matt Leighninger and Mike Smith about the innovative project known as Text Talk Act. The confab will take place from 2-3pm Eastern / 11-noon Pacific.

The first round of Text Talk Act took place on December 5, and round two is coming up on April 24 (and we hope you’re planning to participate!).

This is new and important stuff here, folks. We’ve been using Mike Smith’s United Americans platform as well as Textizen to design a text-enabled in-person dialogue process. In other words, people get together in small groups of 4 or 5, text into the same number, and start engaging in a dialogue with their group that is prompted by a video, a couple of polling questions, and then discussion questions that come to them via text. Pretty cool!

Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium is the main wizard this, and he talks about this being a way to blend “thin engagement” (what we usually do online and on our phones) with “thick engagement” (the stuff we NCDDers tend to value that takes more time and is best done face-to-face. It’s a way of melding the fun and convenience of texting with the irreplaceable value of face-to-face dialogue.

Along with learning more about the ins-and-outs of this project, Mike will talk to us about how any NCDD member can use United Americans’ technology to design your own text-enabled dialogue projects.

A word on the format: NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members [and potential members] of NCDD to talk with innovators in our field about the work they’re doing and connect with each other around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is not required for participation.

This will be a simple conference call (audio only), and most participants will also be engaging on a collaborative doc on Hackpad.com to interact with each other, pose questions, share resources, and take notes.

Register Now to Secure Your Spot…

Join us April 24th for Text, Talk, Act on Mental Health – Part II Electric Boogaloo

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

As you know, NCDD is part of the collaboration running the Creating Community Solutions national dialogue effort aimed at tackling mental health issues in our communities. We have been supporting the effort in many ways, including collaborating on the “Text, Talk, Act” nationwide text-enhanced dialogue last December.

We are pleased to announce that another installment of the Text, Talk, Act conversation will be taking place this April 24th.

The Text, Talk, Act to Improve Mental Health conversation will be an hour-long event that uses text messaging to get people talking about mental health and encourage them to take action. The hope is that through this event, young people (and not-so-young people!) can have a conversation with their peers and give voice to an issue that can otherwise be difficult for them to speak about.

Last year’s event was a big success, with an estimated 2,000 people participating in the conversation (600 phones). Participants described the event this way:

We encourage NCDD members–especially those of you based at universities and high schools–to participate in this important effort. On April 24th, you can dial in and participate in the conversation, or better yet, you can convene your own dialogue event on mental health and use the Text, Talk, Act event as a starting point for your own conversations. We would love to see NCDD members hosting their own conversations, and if you do, we ask that you register your event so that it can be listed on the Creating Community Solutions dialogue map.

It’s easy to get plugged into the event by following these simple steps:

At any time on April 24th, gather 3-4 of your friends, family, classmates, students, and/or colleagues;
Text “start” to 89800; and
Receive polling and discussion questions via text messaging while having a face-to-face dialogue with your group.

Learn more by visiting www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/texttalkact. You can also watch and share the informational video on the campaign.

We hope to see many of you join in this important nationwide conversation on April 24th!

Text, Talk, Act: Results and How to Continue

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

Last week, on Dec. 5, thousands of people across the country joined Creating Community Solutions in a “Text, Talk, and Act,” a nationwide discussion on mental health via text. Participants met in groups of 4-5 to talk about the importance of mental health, their personal experiences, and what they could do to make a difference.

The initiative was designed to engage high school and college students in particular, using technology that is ubiquitous in their lives. Over 600 phones (and approx. 2,400 people) joined in to “Text, Talk, and Act” last Thursday.

NCDD is one of the organizing groups for Creating Community Solutions, and we contributed to this innovative project in several ways — including designing the infographic used to publicize the event!

Here’s a photo collage that one of our participant groups (the team @JCFNmemphis) submitted to us…

JCFN-Memphis The discussion questions were designed to provide a safe space for candid dialogue on mental health, one of the most critical and misunderstood public issues we face. During the conversation, groups were asked to respond to polling questions related to mental health. Results from the live polling questions were tabulated almost instantly, so people could see how participants across the country responded.

Many of the participants reported that mental health is very important in their lives: 59% of respondents said that they thought about mental health every day and 69% said that it was extremely important to them.

During the conversation, participants discussed what schools and communities are doing well to support mental health. “Having understanding psychologists and social workers in the school systems really helps the students feel comfortable talking about their problems,” one participant answered. Other responses included support groups, open discussions, and early intervention. Some participants noted that we need more attention and programs to address mental health challenges: “In our community, no one is really trying anything. We think more legislators who are personally involved in actively caring for those with mental health issues need to be open advocates.”

The process also provided an opportunity for participants to discuss actions they can take to strengthen mental health on their campuses and in their communities. Some of the action ideas included starting nonprofits, raising awareness, and continuing the conversation on mental health in their school or community. Participants also noted that individual, everyday actions can make a difference as well: “Allow my actions to show I am someone who you can talk to when people need to.”

View more results from the polling questions and additional actions you can take at: www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/texttalkact

We are also on Storify! Review the event here: http://bit.ly/TextTalkActStory

If you weren’t able to participate last week, you can now – we’ve left the texting platform open. Taking part is easy: just gather a few friends, colleagues, or fellow students, and text START to 89800 any time you like.

Help make this bigger and better by referring a friend, posting or tweeting about #texttalkact, and using the texting platform to suggest ways for us to improve the experience.

Thanks to everyone who participated last week, and keep texting, talking, and acting!

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