Category Archives: current issues

Learning from Radio-Supported Dialogues on Hunger in CA

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Public radio is a powerful, natural ally to D&D work, but often an under-utilized one, so we’re happy to feature the insights gained from a radio-supported community conversation on hunger that recently took place in CA. The strategies come from NCDD supporting member jesikah maria ross of Capital Public Radio, and we encourage you to read her piece below or find the original here. You can also check out the great toolkit she created to help others start their own conversations using public radio stories.

10 Strategies for Creating Powerful Conversations via Public Media Events

There’s an alchemy when people get together face-to-face to ponder a tough issue and what to do about it. Good conversations are game changers. They help us connect with the topic, see issues in a new light, and shift how we relate to people different from us. All that impacts our willingness to work together to solve wicked problems.

Democracy is not a spectator sport and if we want our world to be a better place then a diverse array of people need to participate in community problem-solving. Creatively designed public conversation events invite the kind of participation through which the wider public can respectfully explore a thorny topic together. Public radio stations, in our role as community conveners and storytellers, are uniquely positioned to make these events happen.

But how? Here are ten strategies I developed while designing a series of public conversations called Hunger in the Farm-to-Fork Capital as part of Capital Public Radio’s multiplatform documentary project Hidden Hunger. My ideas are informed by The World Café, literary salons, and my own experience throwing big parties.

These strategies aren’t unique to pubradio events. They’ll work for anyone interested in sparking conversations through storytelling activities. Scroll to the end for a handy infographic. And check out this video to see what these events were like.

Invite Unlikely Allies
Great parties have a diverse mix of people and a host who knows how to connect them. The collision of different points of view provokes new understandings and creates relationships among people who wouldn’t otherwise meet. Deliberately invite a wide cross-section of residents to attend the public event.

Create the Space
The physical space is the container for the participant’s experience. Create an environment that is beautiful, inviting, and living-room-like to establish that your event is more than a typical civic meetup. For example, seat guests at round tables featuring colorful tablecloths, fresh flowers, and appetizers.

Set The Tone
People do their best thinking when they feel comfortable and engaged. They listen and stay open to new ideas when the atmosphere is respectful. Find ways to create and communicate a warm, open, and generous atmosphere throughout every aspect of the event. One idea: provide table hosts that welcome and introduce participants as they sit down.

Give the Context
Begin the event with a warm welcome. Clearly convey the reason you are bringing people together and what you hope to achieve. Establish a spirit of inquiry and the goal of sharing experiences, listening to one another, and making meaning together about a social issue. Review etiquette and give participants a road map for what’s to come.

Tell Me A Story
Communicate with stories, not statistics. Personal stories build understanding and empathy. Their intimacy and immediacy connect us with our own values and circumstances. Play a few audio clips and invite selected community leaders to respond by sharing personal and professional reflections.

Connect The Dots
Give participants time to talk in small groups about the stories and speakers.   Provide table hosts with questions that encourage participants to share personal reflections and surface connections between their lives and the experiences of storytellers.

Mix It Up
Have you ever been seated at a table and felt stuck there? Or just wanted the chance to talk to more people at a gathering? Make the experience playful and energizing by having participants switch tables during the event. This allows them to meet new people and cross-pollinate ideas between conversations.

Share Collective Insights
Bring the entire group together towards the end of the event to reflect on the experience they’ve just had. Elicit common themes and discoveries to identify patterns, share new knowledge, and build a shared understanding of the kind of community that they want to live in.

Provide A Path Forward
Powerful conversations fire people up.   Create ways for participants to continue the conversation, learn more, and get involved. Engage community partners in generating concrete and timely action steps to share with participants at the end of the event.

Assess and Share Results
Use graphic recorders, event surveys, exit interviews or other tools to assess the impact of the experience on participants. Share evaluation data that community partners can use to advance their goals. Dynamic public conversation events are a team effort—celebrate your collective success with a party to acknowledge everyone’s role and contributions.

Here is a handy cheat sheet of the above steps. If you have other tips on how to design powerful public encounters send them my way!

You can find the original version of this Jesikah Maria Ross blog post at http://jesikahmariaross.com/2015/10/10-strategies-for-creating-powerful-conversations-via-public-media-events.

Tunisian Dialogue Group Wins 2015 Nobel Peace Prize

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The awarding of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet is a powerful reminder of the importance of the work of D&D. From improving neighborhoods to preventing civil wars, we are seeing D&D being recognized more and more as a crucial part of how we build a better future together. NCDD joins the rest of the field in congratulating and thanking the Quartet for its work and contributions. You can learn more about the Quartet’s efforts in the US Institute of Peace‘s congratulatory post below, or by finding the original here.

Tunisia’s Nobel Peace Prize Highlights the Role of Civil Society

The U.S. Institute of Peace congratulates the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet on winning the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for its role in building democracy after the country’s 2011 Jasmine Revolution. The Quartet is a partnership of leading Tunisian civil society institutions – the country’s labor federation, chamber of commerce, lawyer’s union and nationwide human rights organization. It has served as a key mediator in Tunisian political struggles over how to reform the country following the 2011 overthrow of its long-standing, authoritarian regime.

“This award underscores the critical role of a vibrant civil society in building stable, peaceful democracies,” said USIP President Nancy Lindborg. “As Tunisia perseveres with its effort to convert the Arab spring revolution into a more stable democratic future, strong independent organizations like these are essential. And at a time when civil society is under fire in increasingly repressive regimes, this prize celebrates how this Tunisian quartet showed the world that dialogue is more powerful than violence.”

USIP supports Tunisians’ peacebuilding efforts on the local, regional and national level. The Institute has helped Tunisians strengthen and reform civil society and government institutions. It has trained officials of Tunisia’s justice and police ministries on peacebuilding approaches to countering violent extremism, and on managing border security. USIP assists the Alliance of Tunisian Facilitators, a group of civil society leaders who serve as mediators and facilitators to peacefully resolve conflicts in their communities. The Institute supported the first Tunisian-led effort to study the Quartet process and seek to draw from it possible lessons for national dialogue in the region.

The Nobel award comes a week after USIP and the Tunisian Association for Political Studies (ATEP) co-published National Dialogue in Tunisia, a book including interviews with leaders of the dialogue analyzing how that process has evolved. The book is meant to support further peacebuilding and democratization in Tunisia and other countries.

USIP has hosted key Tunisian leaders, including Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the country’s leading Islamist party, and President Beji Caid Essebsi, to further the cause of pursuing democratic reform through peaceful means.

You can find the original version of this USIP blog post at www.usip.org/publications/2015/10/09/tunisia-s-nobel-peace-prize-highlights-the-role-of-civil-society.

Re-imagining Philadelphia’s Community-Police Relations

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Relations between communities and police continues to be one of the most relevant yet difficult dialogue issues of our day, so we wanted to share this recent piece that the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation – an NCDD member organization – recently shared about a police-community dialogue event in Philadelphia on their Challenges to Democracy blog. It provides a look into how these dialogues can begin and the impact they can have on their participants – and their facilitators. Read more below or find the original post here.

Philadelphia Engages Young People in Dialogue on Community-Police Relations

Ash logoIn this post, originally published by MBK Philly, Harvard Graduate School of Design student Courtney D. Sharpe recaps the latest in a series of efforts by My Brother’s Keeper Philadelphia and city agencies to engage youth in a dialogue on community-police relations. The one-day summit, attended by over 200 young people, and subsequent roundtable in City Hall were intended as platforms for youth, especially youth of color, to be able to share their stories and offer suggestions for ways that police and the community can adapt behaviors or policies to work better together. Sharpe is working with My Brother’s Keeper Philadelphia this summer as an Ash Center Summer Fellow. Read more about My Brother’s Keeper Philadelphia, the local affiliate of a national effort launched by President Obama to tackle the opportunity gaps for boys and young men of color. 

This summer began with harrowing tales that exposed latent racism in communities and disproportionate police force used against minority communities across the nation. The tragic AME church massacre and subsequent church fires, the fight to keep flying the confederate flag, and the images of seeing innocent black children chased by police with guns drawn made for an emotional, and inherently politically charged, beginning to the season.

Like many parts of the rest of the country, Philadelphia looked on at these events with horror and sympathy – during this climate of heightened awareness we reflected to create opportunities for interaction among community members to prevent similar travesties from happening in our neighborhoods.

On June 3, My Brother’s Keeper Philadelphia, in partnership with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, the Police Advisory Commission, and the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Multicultural Affairs, hosted “Securing Our Future,” a one-day summit on re-imagining Philadelphia’s community-police relations. The event brought together youth from neighborhoods across the city of diverse ethnic backgrounds along with city officials and police officers to have a facilitated dialogue about the youth’s experience with police.

“Securing Our Future” Summit

The goal of the event was to provide a platform for youth, especially youth of color, to be able to share their stories and offer suggestions for ways that police and the community can adapt behaviors or policies to work better together. The event had over 220 youth and youth advocates who were mostly teenagers and young adults but one class of fifth and sixth graders were also present. The conversations were rich and the youth were engaged in the process.

As a Texan, in the wake of the images and video from McKinney, Texas, I felt particularly moved to be involved in the implementation and report back structure of the events developed for youth-police interaction. No one should see on the television neighborhoods that resemble their own, with people who look like them, being attacked for existing in space.

I was fortunate to be able to serve as a facilitator at one of the tables. One of our first questions asked the youth what positive experiences or memories they had with the police; I was struck that at my table they were not able to come up with any.

At that time city officials at the table began to interject with numerous stories of their own, mostly in their professional capacity. I felt that some of them spoke as if to teach or preach and I was grateful that at the break when people chose different tables my group did not have other adults. I was able to ask questions and get the youth to speak to each other. It was raw, honest, and cathartic. One of the girls at the table was a Chinese immigrant and she shared stories of negative police interaction in three states.

As a follow up to the summit, every young person in attendance that was interested was invited to attend a special meeting on June 10 at City Hall in the Mayor’s Reception Room for the presentations of the findings to the Police Department and to participate in a moderated discussion with police officers. Around fifteen youth participated in the roundtable discussion.

At the conclusion of the formal program, Deputy Commissioner Bethel announced his plans to create a youth advisory council and invited all of the youth present to join as they had demonstrated leadership and commitment to being a part of the change process. The formal event was followed by a pizza party in the Council Caucus Room where police officers, City staff and youth continued their conversations joyfully. It was an auspicious beginning to a necessary dialogue.

You can find the original version of this Challenges to Democracy blog post at www.challengestodemocracy.us/home/philadelphia-engages-young-people-in-dialogue-on-community-police-relations/#sthash.F9TlQVGw.dpuf.

Join the National Deliberation on Health Care Costs

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Three of our long-time NCDD member organizations – the National Issues Forums Institute, Kettering Foundation, and Public Agenda – are teaming up to host a national deliberation around health care issues, and NCDD members are invited to join them! The deliberation will produce a report for policymakers next year that could have a real impact. You can learn more about this collaborative project in the NIFI blog post below or by finding the original post here.

You’re Invited – Join a National Deliberation Project about Healthcare Costs

NIF logoYou are invited to help your group, organization, or community join a national deliberation project about possible directions in healthcare costs. This is a special opportunity to help forum participants be heard in a national report that will be prepared by the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda, and presented to policymakers in May 2016.

For a limited time, the issue guide titled Health Care: How Can We Reduce Costs and Still Get the Care We Need? is available as a FREE download to use at your forums. Companion materials include: a moderator’s guide (free download), a post-forum questionnaire (free download), a preview of a video overview of the issue (watch online for free), and a full length DVD video overview of the issue (order for $6.00 plus shipping).

Please join this national effort by planning to hold at least one forum; posting your forum information in the Events section of the National Issues Forums (NIF) website; and having each forum participant complete a post-forum questionnaire and then return all questionnaires to the address provided.

Public Agenda is encouraging conveners and moderators to audiotape or videotape their forums (a cell phone recording would be fine) if possible, and to send the recordings to Public Agenda. A transcript will be made and a copy returned to the forum conveners. No participants or exact locations will be named in information derived from recordings. Conveners are encouraged to hold forums prior to March 2016, and to return questionnaires (free to download here) by May 2016. For questions about this project, or about recording or reporting on forums, contact Chloe Rinehart at crinehart@publicagenda.org or 212-686-6610, extension 143.

Thank you for your interest in helping people deliberate about this important issue.

More information about issue guide materials here.

You can find the original version of this NIFI blog post at www.nifi.org/en/groups/youre-invited-join-national-deliberation-project-about-healthcare-costs-free-materials.

Support NICD’s Crowdfunding Campaign for Text, Talk, Act

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Earlier this morning, one of our great NCDD organizational members, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, launched an online crowdfunding campaign to support the important work of Text, Talk, Act (TTA) – an amazing youth dialogue program that gets young people talking and taking action around the difficult issue of mental health – and we want to encourage our members to support the effort!

TTA is one of the most successful programs to have come out of the Creating Community Solutions (CCS) initiative that the White House launched in 2013 as a vehicle for national conversation on mental health, and as one of the steering organizations for CCS, NCDD has been a supporter since the beginning. We’ve seen the impact that TTA can have in teens’ lives, so we want to join with NICD to urge you to consider making a tax-deductible donation in support of this important work by clicking here.

Text, Talk, Act dialogues can literally save lives, so please consider making a donation today! You can also help spread the word by sharing the link to the campaign on social media: https://crowdfund.arizona.edu/TTAhero.

All of the funds raised in the crowdfunding campaign will go directly to support TTA programming by providing text messaging technology, materials for youth organizers, outreach coordination, and more. The more that you can help us raise in this crowdfunding effort, the more young people that will be engaged in these important conversations about taking care of and finding support for their mental health.

For more info, you can watch NICD’s promotional video on the project below:

Thanks in advance for supporting this great work!

We encourage you to learn more about TTA and how you can host a youth dialogue on mental health in your community by visiting www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/texttalkact.

NIFI Partners with Faith Leaders on Gender Violence, “Deliberative Discipleship” Conference

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Last week, the National Issues Forums Institute – one of our NCDD organizational members – announced two exciting collaborations they’re undertaking with NCDD member Gregg Kaufman aimed at engaging more communities of faith in deliberation. The projects are full of potential, and we encourage you to learn more in NIFI’s announcement below or to find the original here.

NIF logoFaith Communities & Civic Life

American faith communities associated with Judaism, Islam, Christianity and different religious traditions care deeply about many of the same issues about which the National Issues Forum Institute (NIFI) publishes deliberative dialogue materials. Religious organizations prepare educational materials about issues such as environmental challenges, criminal justice, race and cultural understanding, the economy, and education. Once more, these communities represent tens of thousands of citizens who convene regularly for worship, learning, and service.

How might NIFI introduce deliberative dialogue as a valuable method for discourse in faith community settings? Here are two current projects.

Gregg Kaufman, an NIFI network member and Lutheran pastor, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) staff, are collaborating on a project dedicated to raising awareness about and making choices regarding the tragedy of gender-based violence in America. The ELCA is preparing a formal “social message,” a teaching document to be approved by the denomination’s governing body in November 2015. Kaufman prepared a corresponding deliberative dialogue guide, Gender-based Violence: What Steps Should the Church Take? The guide will be made available to congregations this autumn and a post-forum online survey will collect feedback about the issue and the deliberative process.

The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Washington, D.C. advocacy offices will host a bishops’ conference in September that will coincide with Pope Francis’ visit to Washington. Deliberative Discipleship – Deliberative Democracy is the conference theme. Bishops will have the opportunity to become familiar with deliberative democracy and NIFI issue guides that reflect some of the concerns that the Pope and leaders of many religious bodies are mutually concerned about; economic inequality, immigration, strong families, and protecting the environment.

Faith communities have the capacity to bring people with deep concerns for public issues together. How can deliberative democracy practitioners develop productive alliances?

For more information about these projects contact:

Gregg Kaufman

Bridge Alliance Launches Declaration of Engagement & New Website

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We want to encourage our NCDD members to check out the newly-launched website of our partners with the Bridge Alliance – a new organization that “exists to upgrade our democratic republic by serving organizations and citizens who are uniting Americans across the political divides to improve civility and collaboration.” You can find their new web home at www.bridgealliance.us.

NCDD is proud to be one of the Founding Members of the Bridge Alliance, which we’ve been supporting and involved in since its early stages. The Alliance is an exciting effort to bring together and support many groups in and beyond the D&D field that are working to overcome the limitations that the bitter, partisan divides in our political system place on our ability to solve problems for our communities, our nation, and our world.

One of the first steps that the Alliance is taking together is to encourage everyday citizens to sign their Declaration of Engagement, which acknowledges that we all have a part to play in the solution. The pledge is simple, and it reads:

I am part of the solution to political dysfunction. Through my actions I commit to:

  • Engage in respectful dialogue with others, even if we disagree
  • Seek creative problem solving with others
  • Support elected officials and leaders who work together to address and solve our nation’s challenges.

Through the actions of all of us, together, we can achieve a more perfect union.

We encourage our members to sign the Declaration and familiarize yourself with the work that the Bridge Alliance is doing. You can start to get a sense of what the Alliance is about from their website and by checking out the recorded talks from their Transpartisan Conference in Boston.

Either way, keep an eye out for the great work that the Alliance has coming in the future!

Iowa Caucuses Upgrade Participation Technology for 2016

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We wanted to repost this interesting post that we first found on the Gov 2.0 Watch blog that NCDD organizational member the Davenport Institute runs. With the announcement that the 2016 Iowa caucuses will integrate mobile technology, it appears party politics may be catching up with some of the D&D field in terms of civic tech. Check out the post below or find the original here.

DavenportInst-logo21st Century Caucuses

The Iowa Caucuses are always of the highlights of any presidential campaign.  There is a sense of deeper, beyond-the-ballot-box engagement that can feel like a healthy dose of old-fashioned democracy.  But this year the caucuses will incorporate technology.  Planners hope to offer an example of how new technology can be incorporated into traditional experiences:

Tallying results from the Iowa presidential caucuses will rely on mobile technology for the first time in 2016. The Democratic and Republican parties and Microsoft jointly announced that apps are being developed for each party that will tabulate precinct results, verify them, and quickly make them publicly available.

“The caucus results will be delivered via this new mobile-enabled, cloud-based platform that will help facilitate these accurate and timely results,” says Dan’l Lewin, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Technology and Civic Engagement.

You can read more and see a demonstration of the technology here.

Reflections on a Text, Talk, Act Dialogue on Mental Health

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We want to share an update on Text, Talk, Act – the youth mental health conversation initiative launched in 2013 by NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions – that we saw on NCDD organizational member the Public Conversations Project‘s blog. They featured a piece by Nancy Goodman reflecting on the what was discussed in the TTA conversation she facilitated with high school teens, and it gives a great glimpse into how TTA works and how powerful these dialogues are.

We encourage you to read Nancy’s piece below or find the original PCP post here. Learn more about Text, Talk, Act by clicking here.

Teens Talk Mental Health

I am a transition coordinator at Gloucester High School and a Public Conversations training alumni. In May, I facilitated a group of students coming together to discuss the stigmas around conversations about mental health as part of the nation-wide “Text, Talk, Act” campaign, of which Public Conversations Project was a partner. The conversation was deeply personal, but also indicative of the more broadly felt silence we as a society hold around this topic. Here are some of the questions and ideas we explored together.

Why is mental health a hard topic to talk about?

The students’ answers included, “You can’t see it – compared to physical illness,” “We’re under so much pressure to be perfect, to be acting as if we’re coping well,” and “There’s such a stigma associated with mental stuff.”

How closely has mental illness affected you?

Three of the six students described experiencing some depression or anxiety; one of them had tried to commit suicide last winter. I was taken aback by this revelation and grappled with how to respond. I asked whether others in the group had been aware of her struggle. Some reported having had a sense that something was wrong and others had not known. The students took her announcement in stride, and it did not become a focal point of our conversation. One described struggling with PTSD and OCD. Another has siblings with autism and Asperger’s. Two reported that they have not had close contact with mental illness.

What has been helpful and not so helpful?

Students reported that the school psychologists are sometimes helpful and sometimes not helpful, that drama club has been a “lifesaver,” and that medication has been helpful. One girl reported that, even though she resisted her at first, she now loves her therapist a lot. One of the girls who described herself as generally upbeat said that something that is not helpful is people coming up to her and asking if she’s ok just “because I’m not all smiley and happy that day.” Another student said, “I am only close to two friends. Sometimes I wish other people would reach out and invite me to hang out.”

What’s the definition of mental health?

  1. No one is 100% healthy.
  2. It’s liking who you are as a person.
  3. It’s about eating well and staying active.
  4. It’s being able to ask for what you need.

What do you want to/are you willing to do next?

Although students liked the idea of talking more, they felt strongly that they didn’t want to become “spokespeople” for mental health. They felt they would be too vulnerable to the ignorant reactions from certain students. The two drama club students expressed interest in going through a similar set of questions within the drama club.

Facilitator’s perspective:

As the group facilitator, there are two impressions from the conversation I’d like to share. First, with all the work that has been done to empower young women, several of these girls undermined their own comments by giggling after they made a point or shared something personal. Beyond nervous laughter, this behavior betrayed a real discomfort with their own stories, not just the difficult topic at hand.

My second impression is that, as a society, we’ve chosen to medicate our children rather than to relieve the conditions that are contributing to their mental illnesses.

Overall I was thrilled to be part of this authentic conversation about a topic of real concern to these students.

You can find the original version of this Public Conversations Project blog post at www.publicconversations.org/blog/teens-talk-mental-health#sthash.q8gyIMri.dpuf.

UN Hosts History’s Largest Global Climate Deliberation

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Last month, the team with the Jefferson Center, an NCDD member organization, hosted one of 96 day-long deliberations that occurred around the world where average citizens discussed what should be done about climate change. It was the largest ever such consultation, and the results from Minnesota and abroad are fascinating. We encourage you to read the Jefferson Center’s piece about the process and the results below, or find the original here.

JeffersonCenterLogoWorld Wide Views in the Twin Cities

This past Saturday, we hosted 70 Twin Cities metro area residents at the Science Museum in Saint Paul to discuss climate and energy issues as part of a global day of public deliberation. Organized by the World Wide Views Alliance, 75 countries around the world conducted World Wide Views on Climate and Energy forums in the largest ever global citizen consultation on climate change. The goal was to gather quantifiable public opinion to inform decision makers at every level, but particularly negotiators at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21).

Each of the 96 host sites followed the same agenda and addressed the same questions. The resulting data is credible and consistent, making the results an important asset to both researchers and politicians. Every site, including ours in St. Paul, provided participants with the same informational materials on current international climate policy issues. Participants were asked to discuss and vote on a series of questions designed to reflect controversies that might arise at the COP21 talks in Paris this December. Voting results were uploaded in real time.

67% of the Minnesota participants identified as “very concerned” about climate change, and 79% felt that the UN climate negotiations over the past twenty years had not done enough to tackle climate change. National and global percentages were very similar. 97% of Minnesota participants (along with 95% of US participants) agreed that our country should take some measures to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions even if other countries do not take action.

Minnesotans were slightly in favor of a carbon tax for all countries (with gradually increasing costs for countries that do not reduce their emissions), although a significant portion of the room also completely opposed a carbon tax, much more so than the global average. On the other hand, Minnesotans – in agreement with 59% of the United States participants – were more enthusiastic about cutting fossil fuel subsidies than the rest of the world, and slightly more in favor of stopping fossil fuel exploration than the global average.

wwv-fossil-exploration

Twin Cities residents tended to agree with the rest of the world about international policy. 77% of Minnesota participants were in favor of a legally binding treaty in Paris, either for all countries or at least for developed and emerging nations. 97% of Minnesotan participants also agreed with the overwhelming national and global consensus that countries should update their climate commitments every five years after Paris.

Twin Cities participants were nearly unanimous (96%) in agreeing that all countries should report their emissions and report on the progress of their contribution to lower emissions, but were more divided about whether the UN should have the authority to conduct reviews for each country (55%) or only for global combined efforts (38%). These responses roughly reflect the average national and global data trends, but stand in stark contrast to the 70% of developed country participants in favor of the UN reviewing individual countries.

wwv-un-review

Similarly controversial: the lengths different groups of people were willing to go in order to stop climate change. 71% of developed country participants thought that the world should do “whatever it takes to limit temperatures exceeding 2 degrees Celsius of warming,” but only 54% of Minnesotans agreed.

Participants from the seven county metro area were selected to, as near as possible, reflect the racial, gender, age, and educational diversity of the Twin Cities, in order to elevate the opinions representative of all metro area residents. The results from all World Wide Views sites will be shared with the delegates attending the COP21 meetings, both ahead of and during the negotiations in Paris. Compare results yourself at the World Wide Views results page.

Stay tuned for more posts as we continue to unpack World Wide Views results.