Category Archives: educational opportunities

League of Extraordinary Trainers Releases 2015 Schedule

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We are pleased to let you know that The League of Extraodinatory Trainers – an NCDD organizational member and one of the great partners who helped us put on NCDD 2014 conference – recently released their 2015 training schedule. LET offers excellent trainings that can help strengthen your public engagement practice, so we encourage you to check out the announcement below and register before the early bird deadlines!

And don’t forget: dues-paying NCDD members receive a 10% discount on all LET trainings, and a 20% discount if you register by the early bird date! Not up to date on your dues? Renew your membership today!

LeagueOfExtraordinaryTrainers-logoThe landscape of public participation and community engagement is changing. Rapid developments in technology, the rampant economic and political changes across the globe, widespread use of social media, and a decline in public trust have created new challenges for governments, organizations and institutions. Add to that the growing desire of citizens to participate in building the democratic architecture of their countries and communities, and it is obvious that a proven framework for public participation has never been more essential!

Public anger is an increasing fact of society. Growing global citizen outrage causes government gridlock, lawsuits, stopped projects, election losses, loss of time, money, and destroyed credibility.

IAP2 Foundations Program
(a revamped IAP2 Certificate Program – new July 1, 2014)

Foundations in Public Participation was designed with the input of successful practitioners who work with diverse populations and divergent circumstances throughout the world. This course will let you hit the ground running, armed with the knowledge and confidence you need to plan and execute effective initiatives for any area in which you may be working.

2015 Training Events:

Emotion, Outrage and Public Participation EOP2

This practical, hands-on workshop is a fresh mix of lecture, video, small and large group discussion and authentic, real world exercises that give you the answers, tools and ability to prevent problems, manage the tough public issues that you face and keep your organization on track and moving forward.

2015 Training Events:

We thank the League of Extraordinary Trainers for their continued support of NCDD and encourage you to find their complete training schedule by visiting www.extraordinarytrainers.com/schedules.

Register for the Citizen University 2015 Conference

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We want to encourage our members to attend the 2015 Citizen University annual conference this March 20th-21st in Seattle, Washington if you can. Citizen University conferences are impressive gatherings that do a lot to help galvanize leaders from many different sectors, and we know NCDD members will be able to both contribute and gain a lot by attending.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Citizen Power,” and here’s a bit of how the organizers describe it:

The Citizen University annual National Conference is like no other civic gathering in America. Hundreds of changemakers, activists, and catalysts show up to learn about power, build their networks, and recharge their sense of purpose. They come from across the country, the political spectrum, and a wide range of domains — from immigrant rights to national service, voting reform to veteran re-integration, civic education to Hollywood and tech. They are you.

Our theme this year is Citizen Power, particularly in the shadow of Ferguson and Staten Island, and the 50th anniversary of so much of the Civil Rights Movement. This is a time when citizens are solving problems in new ways, bypassing broken institutions, stale ideologies, and polarized politics. We are part of a movement to rekindle citizenship in America. We hope you’ll join us!

Regular registration for this year’s conference is $200, but you can still take advantage of the $175 early bird rate or even cheaper rates if you are a student, veteran, senior, or volunteer. The early bird registration cut off is February 28th, so make sure to register ASAP.

The conference has an impressive lineup of presenters and speakers and will be attended by lots of movers and shakers, including our own executive directory Sandy Heierbacher. If you’re planning to attend this year, make sure to send her a message at sandy@ncdd.org letting her know you’re interested in meeting up with her and other NCDD members who will be in attendance.

For more information on Citizen University, visit www.citizenuniversity.us/conference. We hope to see some of you there!

Join Everyday Democracy’s Orientation Webinar on Feb. 12

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If you’re not already familiar with the work of Everyday Democracy, one of our founding NCDD organizational members, we highly encourage you to register for their upcoming orientation webinar on Thursday, February 12th at 2pm Eastern.

EvDem LogoEvDem has been honing its dialogue-to-change model for years in a huge variety of communities and has developed a wide ranging suite of tools to support the communities they work with, and this webinar is a great opportunity to get an overview of what resources they have to offer and how you can engage with their great work.

Here’s how the folks at EvDem describe the webinar:

Are you new to Everyday Democracy? Do you want to hear about success stories of communities that have used dialogue to create positive change? Join us for a webinar on Thursday, February 12 at 2pm ET for an orientation of our approach to change…

During this webinar, we will explore Everyday Democracy’s approach to change through dialogue and action. We will give an overview to how the process works, what kinds of results we’ve seen from using our approach, and  share a few stories of some of the communities we have worked with.

Not familiar with Everyday Democracy’s work? Here’s a bit of how they describe what they do:

We help communities build their own capacity for inclusive dialogue and positive change. Our ultimate aim is to create a national civic infrastructure that supports and values everyone’s voice and participation.

Because structural racism and other structural inequities affect communities everywhere, we help community groups use an “equity lens” in every phase of dialogue and change – coalition building, messaging, recruitment, issue framing, facilitation, and linking the results of their dialogues to action and change. We provide advice, training and flexible how-to resources on a wide range of issues – including poverty, racial equity, education, building strong neighborhoods, community-police relations, violence, early childhood, and community planning.

This webinar will be a great chance to learn about the work and resources of one of the leading D&D organizations in the field, so we hope you will consider attending. You can learn more about the webinar on EvDem’s website by clicking here, and you can register for it by visiting https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5362336164849502721.

We hope to “see” you online next Thursday!

 

Community Development Conference Proposals due Feb. 15

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We want to make sure our members know about the 46th annual Community Development Conference being hosted by the Community Development Society this July 19-22 and encourage you to submit an abstract for a workshop by the deadline on February 15th. Learn more in the announcement below or visit www.comm-dev.org.

Community Development Society 2015 Conference
July 19-22, 2015
Hilton Lexington Downtown, Lexington, Kentucky

Conference Theme: Creativity and Culture: Community Development Approaches for Strengthening Health, Environment, Economic Vibrancy, Social Justice and Democracy

The Community Development Society has a history of encouraging community transformation through creativity and imagination. The CDS conference provides an excellent environment for community developers to share experiences, research, and strategies through a vast array of events including preconference workshops, panel sessions, keynote speakers, mobile learning workshops, poster sessions, networking receptions and presentations. Elements of creative expression will be infused throughout the 2015 CDS conference to highlight the conference theme.

The deadline for paper or workshop abstracts is February 15, 2015, 11:59 p.m. CST. You can find the full call for submissions at www.comm-dev.org/images/2015.Conference/CDS2015CallforAbstractsRevised1.23.15.pdf. The submission form is available at http://comm-dev.org/about-us/2015-conference/call-for-abstracts.

Apply to the Summer Institute of Civic Studies by Mar. 15

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We encourage NCDD members to apply to be part of the 7th annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies this June 15-25, and also to consider attending the 2015 Frontiers of Democracy conference this June 24-25. Both events have institutions in the field that are stewarded by NCDD supporting members Drs. Peter Levine and Nancy Thomas of Tufts University.

I myself am a Summer Institute alumni and have attended multiple Frontiers conferences, and they are both great opportunities to learn and work with many of the nation’s leaders of civic innovation. Find out more below about both  in the announcement below or by clicking here.

Tufts-logo

The 7th Annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies

The seventh annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies will be an intensive, two-week, interdisciplinary seminar bringing together faculty, advanced graduate students, and practitioners from many countries and diverse fields of study.

Organized by Peter Levine of Tufts University’s Tisch College and Karol Sołtan of the University of Maryland, the Summer Institute will engage participants in challenging discussions of such topics as:

  • What kinds of citizens (if any) do good regimes need?
  • What should such citizens know, believe, and do?
  • What practices and institutional structures promote the right kinds of citizenship?
  • What ought to be the relationships among empirical evidence, ethics, and strategy?

The syllabus for the sixth annual seminar (in 2014) is here: Continue reading →

Evaluation & Collective Impact Workshops from Tamarack

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We want to make sure NCDDers know about two great workshops on evaluation and collective impact being offered this winter by the good people at Tamarack, an NCDD organizational member. We encourage you to read their announcement below or find out more at www.tamarackcommunity.ca.

As you plan your winter learning schedule, we invite you to two of our signature 3-day workshops that are designed to advance your work in community change.

Both of these workshops were completely oversubscribed in 2014, so we encourage you to register or Hold a Seat for these workshops today.

Evaluating Community Impact: Capturing and Making Sense of Outcomes

Liz Weaver and Mark Cabaj are leading the ever-popular Evaluating Community Impact workshop in Toronto, ON from February 23-25, 2015. Each year, they carefully incorporate new tools and trends into the curriculum to ensure you are getting the latest and greatest information about how to capture, evaluate and communicate impacts in your community.

Recent upgrades to the Toronto curriculum will include:

  • How to employ hard and soft data to measure progress
  • New methods for capturing “systems change”
  • How to use narratives to communicate community impact to others

For a closer look at the workshop agenda, please visit our event agenda page.

Click here to Register or Hold a Seat for the workshop

Champions for Change: Leading a Backbone Organization for Collective Impact

Champions for Change is an advanced training offered by the Tamarack Institute in collaboration with FSG Social Impact Consultants and will be held in Calgary, AB from April 15-17, 2015.

Plenary sessions and workshops will be led by John Kania and Fay Hanleybrown of FSG, as well as Liz Weaver and Paul Born from the Tamarack Institute. Topics that will be presented include:

  • Deeply understanding the roles and impact strategies of the backbone organization
  • Developing and learning from shared measurement
  • Community engagement to build the will of your community
  • Making collaborative governance effective
  • Sustaining funding for collective impact over the long term
  • Working in complexity and the importance of adaptive leadership
  • Getting to true impact and systems change

For a closer look at the workshop agenda, please visit our event agenda page.

This dynamic learning experience is an important step for staff of Backbone Organizations and steering committee members of collective impact initiatives to develop their capacity as collaborative leaders.

Click here to Register or Hold a Seat for the workshop

Special rates are available for both workshops for teams registering three or more people. Please feel free to contact Kirsti if you have any questions.

We look forward to hearing from you and we hope that you’ll join us for these workshops for insightful learning and an opportunity to foster meaningful connections.

ALA Midwinter Meeting Includes Engagement Meetup

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The American Library Association (ALA) has been focusing increasingly on community engagement and using libraries as spaces for civic dialogue recently. As part of that work, they sent out an invitation to a reception of engagement professionals during their 2015 Midwinter Meeting. We encourage NCDD members to read the invitation below and learn more about ALA at alamw15.ala.org.

An invitation for those of you attending ALA’s 2015 Midwinter Meeting:

Are you an expert in engaging your community? Or do you simply want to be? Join ALA’s Public Programs Office for a Libraries Fostering Community Engagement Reception at the 2015 Midwinter Meeting.

The gathering will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, January 31, at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Hyde Park/CC 11A (on-site at the convention center). Connect with like-minded library professionals at this informal networking reception. Share your ideas, vent your frustrations, and hopefully walk away inspired.

Light refreshment will be served.

Please add the event to your Scheduler at the following link so we can know how many people to expect: http://alamw15.ala.org/node/26873

If you have any questions, please contact Brian Russell at brussell@ala.org. Look forward to seeing you there!

This event is sponsored by the ALA initiative Libraries Transforming Communities (ala.org/LTC).

IAF N. American Conference Content Proposals due Jan. 24

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We want to make sure that NCDD members are aware of a great opportunity to participate in – and maybe present at – the International Association of Facilitators‘s 2015 North American Conference (IAFNA 2015), which will be taking place this May 14th – 16th in Alberta, Canada. The conference has recently released a call for proposals, and NCDD members are encouraged to submit conference proposals before the January 24th deadline.

Iiaf logoAF was one of the wonderful co-sponsors of our NCDD 2014 conference, and we know that IAFNA 2015 will be a great event that NCDD members will find useful. We want to thank them for supporting NCDD, and we hope you will support them as well!

The theme of IAFNA 2015 is Innovating, Promoting and Applying. This is a bit more on how IAF Canada, who is hosting the event, describes the conference:

The IAFNA 2015 Conference will weave the three learning streams Face-To-Face, Graphic (Visual), and Virtual through the Conference themes of Innovating, Promoting and Applying facilitation expertise. Additionally, the Saturday morning sessions will focus exclusively on how these three streams may be applied in Indigenous/Multi-Cultural situations within any nations. Coupled with the less structured other three half-days, we‘re inviting a wide variety of educational opportunities for our Delegates.

If you are interested in submitting a workshop proposal, you can get started by downloading the detailed call for proposals PDF file, which can be found by clicking here, and downloading the submission form, which you can find by clicking here.

The IAFNA 2015 conference organizers have this to say about content proposals:

All proposals should provide new concepts of high-quality content, solid training, and interactive learning experiences with a focus on application. The extensive range of facilitation experience and diversity of facilitators at all levels should be taken into consideration. Each workshop must be aligned to at least one of IAF‟s Core Facilitator Competencies:

  • Create Collaborative Client Relationships
  • Plan Appropriate Group Processes
  • Create and Sustain a Participatory Environment
  • Guide Group to Appropriate and Useful Outcomes
  • Build and Maintain Professional Knowledge
  • Model Positive Professional Attitude

We know that there are plenty of NCDD members who have valuable lessons and experiences to share with the IAF community, so we strongly encourage you to apply if you have an idea for a workshop! But content proposals are due Thursday, January 24th, so don’t put it off!

Good luck to all of those who submit content, and we can’t wait to see a successful IAFNA 2015! For more info on the IAFNA conference, visit www.iafna2015.com.

NIF Hosts Live Conversation on Higher Ed & Work, Jan. 21

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We want to encourage you to watch the live broadcast of a key conversation event that the National Issues Forums Institute & the Kettering Foundation – both NCDD organizational members – are hosting on Jan. 21st on the role of higher education in our country and in the economy. You can learn more below or read the original NIF announcement here.

Join us for a national conversation on The Changing World of Work: What Should We Ask of Higher Education?

NIF logoOn Wednesday, January 21, 2015, from 9 am-noon, the National Issues Forums Institute will stream the event live from the National Press Club on the all-new nifi.org.

Speakers and panelists include:

  • Jamie Studley, Deputy Under Secretary of Education
  • Nancy Cantor, Chancellor, Rutgers University-Newark
  • David Mathews, President, Kettering Foundation
  • Harry Boyte, Senior Scholar in Public Philosophy, Augsburg College
  • William Muse, President, National Issues Forums Institute
  • Other distinguished leaders from policymaking institutions, business, and civic and community groups

Organized by the National Issues Forums Institute, the American Commonwealth Partnership at Augsburg College, and the Kettering Foundation, this conversation responds to concerns voiced by thousands of citizens in more than 160 local forums in which participants deliberated on the future of higher education. Cosponsoring organizations include the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the American Democracy Project, Campus Compact, Imagining America, and others.

What kind of economy do we want? Given momentous changes in the economy and the workplace, what should we expect of American higher education? Do our colleges and universities bear some responsibility for the challenges facing young graduates today? Do they owe it to society to train a new generation of entrepreneurs, innovators, job creators, and citizen leaders? And do we still look to them to be the engines of social progress and economic development they have been in the past? During this event, new resources will be released meant to spark local conversations on these and other questions.

Check back here for updates and on the day of the event to view the stream.

You can see the original version of this NIF post at www.nifi.org/en/groups/stream-changing-world-work.

“Resilient Communities” Conference Call from CM, Jan. 22

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We are pleased to invite NCDD members once again to join CommunityMatters – a joint partnership that NCDD is proud to be a member of – for the next installation in their capacity-building call series. This month’s call on “Resilient Communities”, CM_logo-200pxand it will be taking place on Thursday, January 22nd, from 2-3pm Eastern Time.

The folks at CM describe the upcoming call like this:

Our communities are constantly changing. Most changes are gradual and predictable – a new store opens on Main Street, newcomers come to town and priorities shift. But, sometimes change is abrupt, unexpected – a major natural disaster or an epidemic.

How can your city or town best prepare for unanticipated change? What will help your community respond to challenges not only to bounce back, but to become stronger than ever?

Michael Crowley, senior program officer, Institute for Sustainable Communities, and Christine Morris, chief resilience officer with the City of Norfolk, Virginia, join CommunityMatters for an hour-long conference call on January 22. They’ll share ideas about and lessons learned from building resilient communities.

We highly encourage you to save the date and register for the call today by clicking here.

Before you join the call, we also suggest that you check out the blog piece on boosting community resilience that Caitlyn Davison recently posted on the CM blog to accompany the call. You can read her piece below, or find the original here.

We hope to hear you on the call next week!

7 Ways to Boost Your Community’s Resilience

Do you know what’s around the corner for your community?

Community resilience is about making our cities and towns less vulnerable to major and unexpected change, and establishing positive ways to face change together.

Resilient communities build on local strengths to anticipate change, reduce the impact of major events, and come back from a blow stronger than ever.

What steps can your community take toward resilience? Here are seven ideas from cities and towns working to boost local resilience.

1. Stop, collaborate, and listen. Focus on how people in your area collaborate. In trying times, people in resilient communities mobilize quickly, working together to solve problems and help each other. Promote neighbor-to-neighbor cooperation through collaborative efforts like a community garden, seed library, tool sharing, or solar co-op.

2. Put a dot on it. The Carse of Gowrie area of Scotland is engaging residents in identifying local strengths through community resilience mapping. Residents used online software to map assets in light of potential climate change risks and opportunities. The maps help locals visualize their community and provide valuable data for decision-making.

3. Set an agenda for resilience. To kick-start community conversations about resilience in Norfolk, Virginia – one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities – the city hosted an Agenda-Setting Resilience Workshop. The workshop brought together community leaders and residents to discuss the interconnected impacts of local stresses and shocks, including rising sea level and recurrent tidal flooding. Feedback from the workshop will inform the city’s resilience plan.

4. Create a local resilience task force. In New York’s Hudson Valley, non-profit Scenic Hudson formed a task force to plan for sea level rise and flood-resistant waterfronts. The task force’s final report outlines general and site-specific recommendations that promote resilient and thriving waterfront communities.

5. Practice your plan. You might have the slickest emergency plan ever written, but it isn’t going to do your town much good if no one else knows about it. Still recovering from Superstorm Sandy, the community of Red Hook, New York isn’t messing around. After developing an emergency response plan based on community members’ experience during Sandy, the Red Hook Coalition organized Ready Red Hook Day, a fun practice event to walk through the plan and visit local response stations.

6. Talk about communication during crisis. When a disaster strikes, will people in your community know about it? How will they let others know they are okay, or that they need assistance? In San Francisco, grassroots resilience planning helped develop a simple system for the elderly to communicate – a green door hanger indicates everyone got out safely; red means help is needed.

7. Plan big. Communities in Vermont know that planning for resilience at the local level might not be enough – they experienced crisis first-hand after Hurricane Irene devastated large parts of the state in 2011. Resilient Vermont, led by the Institute for Sustainable Communities, is working to develop an integrated, long-term strategy for resilience that weaves together state, regional, and local initiatives.

On January 22, Michael Crowley, senior program officer, Institute for Sustainable Communities, and Christine Morris, chief resilience officer with the city of Norfolk, Virginia, join CommunityMatters® for an hour-long talk on community resilience. You’ll find tools and lessons learned for boosting resilience in your area. Register now.

You can find the original version of this CM blog piece at www.communitymatters.org/blog/7-ways-boost-your-community%E2%80%99s-resilience. You can find more information on the “Resilient Communities” conference call at www.communitymatters.org/event/resilient-communities.