Migrant Farmworkers Project (Featured D&D Story)

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

We are happy to share another great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, the Migrant Farmworkers Reading Project. This mini case study was submitted by Sarah Wenzlick via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool, which we recently launched to collect stories from our members about their work.

We know that there are plenty of other stories from our NCDD members out there that can teach key insights about working in dialogue, deliberation, and engagement. We want to hear them! Please add YOUR dialogue story today, and let us learn from you!

Title of Project:

Migrant Farmworkers Reading Project

Description

High school students from Oxbridge visit with the children of migrant farmworkers every other Friday to help them with homework and reading. The children are elementary students in the Lake Worth, FL area–an area with a large migrant population that follows the different agricultural harvests depending on the growing season. Oxbridge’s students help to encourage the elementary school students to focus on their academics, the importance of staying in school, trying your best, becoming bilingual, and show them that many people care about their progress.

We’ve seen an enormous increase in attendance from the elementary students, great enthusiasm and energy from Oxbridge’s students, and improvement in reading (aloud) abilities both in Spanish and in English from both sets of children.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

Intergroup Dialogue
Compassionate Listening

What was your role in the project?

Organizer, Facilitator

What issues did the project primarily address?

Race and racism
Economic issues
Education
Immigration
Youth issues

Lessons Learned

My students have gained a better understanding of what other peoples’ lives are like, especially those of young migrant farmworkers. They have become more appreciative of what they have, such luxuries as constant transportation, parents with stable jobs, access to technology, access to food and clothing, among other things.

International public engagement news & domestic learning opportunities

Posted on October 2, 2013 by NCDD Community

This post was submitted by Rosa Zubizarreta of DiaPraxis via our Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have field news you want to share with the rest of us? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Hi all! I’ve begun translating some articles from the news media in Austria about their growing public participation efforts. This first article is called “Developing Self-Efficacy” by Selbst Wirksam Werden and was published in Biorama, an Austrian online magazine on sustainability. The English version can be found here, and here is an excerpt:

2013 has been officially declared the “European Year of Citizen.” Twenty years after the introduction of EU citizenship, the focus of this year is the achievements of the people themselves and their own aspirations for their future. In the course of this European Year, events are being held to explain to citizens how they can use their EU rights directly and what measures and programs exist. There are also conversations with citizens throughout the European Union, on their views about what the European Union should look like in the future and what reforms are needed to obtain improvements in their daily lives.

The article goes on to describe the public participation efforts taking place in Vorarlberg, Austria, where there have been more than 20 successful “Bürger-Räte” (Citizen’s Councils) held since 2006, using the Wisdom Council model developed by Jim and Jean Rough. They describe the model as follows:

Twelve people from a county, a city or a region are selected at random to spend 1-2 days exploring an issue in a rather open manner. To this end, the facilitation method ‘Dynamic Facilitation’ is used, which allows an associative and creative approach to discovering new possibilities for action. A specially- trained facilitator helps participants uncover what it is they want and how they can creatively develop collaborative solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. At the same time, the process generates a dialogue marked by a high degree of listening.

For anyone interested in learning more about the practice of Dynamic Facilitation, also known as the Choice-Creating process, I will be offering two upcoming workshops this Fall. One in is Burlington, Vermont, from November 7 – 9, and another one will be in Voluntown, Connecticut, from November 14 – 16. For more info on the trainings, please visit www.diapraxis.com.

Collective Impact: A Game Changing Model for the Social Sector

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

I recently asked NCDD supporting member Marty Jacobs to write a primer for the NCDD blog on “collective impact.” This strategy for large-scale collaborative change has been gaining momentum among funders and nonprofit thought leaders, and we wanted to make sure NCDD members are aware of the concept.

Marty Jacobs has been teaching and consulting for 20 years, applying a systems thinking approach to organizations. As of September 30th, Marty is bringing her Collective Impact expertise to the VT Department of Mental Health in her new role as Change Management Analyst. Marty can be reached at marty.jacobs.sis@gmail.com.

Workgroup at Sydney R&P meeting One of the key distinctions between a for profit organization and a not-for-profit one is that the former is focused on increasing shareholder value while the latter is focused on creating community value or impact. Creating lasting impact in the social sector, let alone measuring that impact, is one of the biggest challenges facing nonprofits these days. Past practices often focused on measuring outputs as opposed to measuring outcomes. A new model called Collective Impact is rapidly changing how nonprofits consider their work.

The idea of Collective Impact made waves when the Stanford Social Innovation Review published the article “Collective Impact” in its Winter 2011 edition. It was then followed up with a more in depth article, “Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work,” in 2012. In the first article, the authors suggest that the social sector, funders in particular, need to shift their focus from one of isolated impact to that of collective impact. In order for collective impact to be successful, the following five conditions must be present:

Collaborating organizations must create a common agenda.
These organizations must also share a measurement system that tracks indicators of success.
Stakeholders must work together in mutually reinforcing activities.
They must also engage in continuous communication.
There must be a backbone support organization that coordinates, supports, and facilitates the collective process.

The second article outlines more specifics about implementation of the Collective Impact model. In particular, it outlines three phases of Collective Impact:

Phase I: Initiate Action
Phase II: Organize for Impact
Phase III: Sustain Action and Impact

Within those three phases, the follow components for success need to be continually assessed:

Governance and Infrastructure
Strategic Planning
Community Involvement
Evaluation and Improvement

While the social sector has been buzzing about Collective Impact, it’s important to note that it is not the answer to every nonprofit’s dream. Here are some questions to ask to determine whether or not Collective Impact is the right approach for your particular situation:

Is this a complex problem, that is, one that can only be solved by involving multiple stakeholders?
Do we have the capacity to create the five conditions of Collective Impact?
Do we have community support on this issue? Will we be able to engage stakeholders successfully in this effort?
Can we find backing for the backbone support organization?

Boston 2010 dialogue group If you’re convinced that Collective Impact is the right approach, then here are some questions to ask about your group’s readiness for each of the three phases of Collective Impact:

Phase I:

Governance and Infrastructure: Who would be willing partners and do they agree that Collective Impact would be effective?
Strategic Planning: What data do we currently have and what more do we need in order to assess current reality? Is this feasible?
Community Involvement: Are stakeholders receptive to this idea? How well networked are they?
Evaluation and Improvement: What currently exists for measuring impact? Do we have the capacity and the systems to track progress?

Phase II:

Governance and Infrastructure: What do we need in place for infrastructure and governance in order to keep this effort moving forward? What are we all willing to let go of with respect to control, turf, etc. and what is non-negotiable?
Strategic Planning: What have we identified as potential common goals? Is that supported by the data? Does that align with all the partner organizations’ missions?
Community Involvement: Who are all the stakeholders and how can we fully engage them in this process?
Evaluation and Improvement: Do we all agree on what the best measures for impact are? How will we track it and communicate progress?

Phase III:

Governance and Infrastructure: What is working well? What more do we need to do to improve governance and infrastructure?
Strategic Planning: How do we stay on track with implementation? How do we deal with setbacks or unanticipated problems? How do we communicate progress?
Community Involvement: How do we continue to engage stakeholders? What does meaningful engagement look like over time?
Evaluation and Improvement: What are our measurement systems telling us? How do we know when we need to course correct?

While these questions only touch the surface of implementing a Collective Impact effort, they will help create the thinking needed to dig deeper as the process evolves. Collective Impact is a practice – something that will deepen over time as you become more skilled, and with that, you will see greater impact.

© Marty Jacobs 2013

Report Back on Mental Health in Kansas City

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

As you may know, NCDD is involved in the Creating Community Solutions mental health project, and we hope you will take a moment to read a recent update that our partners at AmericaSpeaks shared on their blog.

On Saturday, September 21, the Creating Community Solutions effort of the National Dialogue on Mental Health hosted a successful all-day town meeting in Kansas City, Missouri. The meeting was part of the collaborative effort lead by the National Institute for Civil Discourse. It was organized and managed by a veteran of dialogue and deliberation, Jen Wilding, with the support of a small but dedicated team and a large and diverse planning committee.

The Mayors of both Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas opened and closed the event and spent the entire day participating. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius also helped open the event that generated lots of good news coverage:

Kansas City Start Article
Fox 4 News Video

Like the events before it in Sacramento and Albuquerque, the organizers successfully recruited a large and diverse audience of 360 participants with pretty good representation of the community along lines of age and race. And like previous meetings, higher educated people were over represented, but this is hard to overcome given the number of health professionals involved.

Click here for a full report on the meeting including data about the participants and the outcomes of all the table discussions.

It was a great pleasure to work with the team in Kansas City to help them produce an AmericaSpeaks 21st Century Town Meeting and support the on-going National Dialogue on Mental Health.

Collaborative Master Planning (Featured D&D Story)

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

Today we’d like to feature another great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, Collaborative Master Planning. This mini case study was submitted by Karen Wianecki via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool, which we recently launched to collect stories from our members about their work.

Title of Project:

Collaborative Master Planning – The Difference Between Consultation & Engagement

Description

We were retained to develop Master Plans for three very special and very unique communities in Ontario, Canada. In developing the Master Plans, we made a commitment to work with the community and to embrace a co-creative and collaborative mindset, at the process.

We recognized early on that whole community engagement was critical and moreover that those who called these communities home knew more about their communities than we did. We were there to learn. The process was designed with participants. Each community determined the approach they wanted to see unfold. In each case, an open, inclusive, engaging, iterative and evolutionary approach was used.

The Master Plans that emerged received broad support from the community members – full time residents as well as seasonal residents. In one case, the community offered the Mayor and Members of Council a standing ovation. A number of major milestones were put in place and some real tangible results have emerged including the infusion of funds from upper levels of government, the acquisition of a signature waterfront site, and the development of a much needed public park, boat launch and beach area.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

Appreciative Inquiry
Conversation Cafe
Charrettes

What was your role in the project?

Primary Facilitator

What issues did the project primarily address?

Economic issues
Environment
Planning and development

Lessons Learned

Engage, do not consult. For many, the only message that emerges from consultation is the ‘con’ part.
Engage early and often.
Say what you mean and mean what you say. commitments. 5. Follow up and follow through.
Value the voices of all.
Build a ‘whole team approach.’ All of us have some of the answers; none of us have all of the answers.
Process is as important as product.
Recognize that collaboration and partnership can produce results that are truly remarkable.

Where to learn more about the project:

www.e-planningsolutions.ca

Disaporas in Dialogue (Featured D&D Story)

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

Today we’d like to feature another great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, the Diasporas in Dialogue project. This mini case study was submitted by Dr. Barbara Tint via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool, which we recently launched to collect stories from our members about their work.

Title of Project:

Diasporas in Dialogue

Description

This project consisted of four years of work conducting assessment, dialogue groups, dialogue training, and community reconciliation capacity-building efforts in multiple African diaspora communities in Portland, Oregon, USA. Predicated on the belief that historical conflicts from home regions were travelling with migrant populations and being left unattended in the diaspora, we saw the need and the opportunity to provide a safe forum for community members to come together to address their fractured past, their difficult present, and their uncertain future.

The African Diaspora Dialogue Project (ADDP), generously supported by the Andrus Family Fund, was a collaboration between the Conflict Resolution Graduate Program at Portland State University and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, serving Oregon and Washington.

The outcomes of the project included transformed communities, healed relationships, new joint ventures and coalitions among community members, newly trained in-community dialogue facilitators and a book about the work.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

Appreciative Inquiry
Public Conversations Project dialogue
Sustained Dialogue
Technology of Participation approaches
Intergroup Dialogue
Restorative Justice approaches

What was your role in the project?

Founder and Director of the Project. Dialogue facilitator. Author of the book.

What issues did the project primarily address?

Partisan divide
Immigration
Youth issues

Lessons Learned

Dialogue was successful and transformative.
Participants were yearning for new skills and knowledge around these issues and often wanted teaching along with dialogue.
Recruitment took much longer than expected and was initially challenging due to suspicions and complicated identity affiliations.
We needed deeper understanding of community needs and desires. Some of our initial thinking had been challenged by what we learned in dialogue.
Organization and logistics were extremely difficult.
Everything took much more time than we expected.
We needed more time for planning and reflection.
As groups had been conducted in English, our ability to involve certain community members was limited.
Status differences in dialogue groups (age, gender, community role) could be both an asset and a challenge.
Community members felt empowered and engaged through this process, and many emerged as leaders for reconciliation.
Working with youth was an important and powerful dimension of reconciliation within the diaspora.
The elders in the communities were invaluable in contributing to the success of the project.
Dialogue facilitation was a deeper skill than we could effectively train for in the time we had allowed.
Other community and refugee groups from different regions were also interested in participating in dialogue.
Ripeness and readiness had a great deal to do with who engaged and benefited from the process.

Where to learn more about the project:

For more information about the Diasporas in Dialogue project and book, please see www.pdx.edu/research/profile/dialogues-deep-change and www.pdx.edu/diasporas-in-dialogue/

New NIF Issue Guide: Who Protects Our Privacy?

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

Our partners at the National Issues Forum Institute have developed a new issue guide, this time in partnership with American Library Association, that we encourage you to find out more about. The guide is called “Who Do I Trust to Protect My Privacy?”, and it is designed to help guide conversations about how our personal information should be protected and by whom. In our digitized and tech-integrated world, we have to find a way to strike the right balance between information accessibility and personal privacy – this guide can help you engage participants in quality discussions on how we actually get there.

This excerpt from the introduction gets to the heart of what this newest guide is about:

In an era of social networks, online databases, and cloud computing, more and more individuals’ personal information is available online and elsewhere. The ease of communicating information in the digital age has changed the way we live, learn, work, and govern. But such instant access to information also presents new challenges to our personal privacy. We depend more and more on evolving technologies and social norms that encourage the disclosure of personal information. What are our expectations for privacy in the digital realm? Is it reasonable to expect that information by and about us remain private? Who do I trust to protect my privacy?

As with other NIF guides, three options for moving forward are laid out for further deliberation. The guide challenges participants to deliberate and decide on which of the following entities should have the final responsibility for protecting our privacy:

Option 1: The Marketplace
Option 2: The Government
Option 3: Myself

For a deeper look at how we might weigh these options, check out the NIF’s full blog post about the guide by clicking here.

You can also find more issue materials, including moderator guides and questionnaires at this link.

Enjoy the guide, good luck as you move forward with deliberations on how to better protect our privacy!

Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogues (Featured D&D Story)

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

Today we’d like to feature another great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, the Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue project. This mini case study was submitted by Libby and Len Traubman via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool, which we recently launched to collect stories from our members about their work.

Title of Project: Face-to-Face Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue: crossing oceans to help others engage

Description
Since 1992 and during 254 meetings, our local handful of women and men — Muslims, Jews, and Christians — continue learning to listen and learn from one another while initiating hundreds of outreach activities across the nation and overseas to help other “adversaries” to successfully communicate and experience that “an enemy is one whose story we have not heard.”

Initial incentive came from coexistence models of the 1980s in the Middle East and Africa. Neve Shalom ~ Wahat as-Salam (Oasis of Peace) is a village where Jewish and Palestinian Israeli families live and learn together. Koinonia, Southern Africa, founded by Reverend Nico Smith during apartheid years, gathered thousands of brave Blacks and White to share meals and stories, sometimes in public at risk to their lives. Both initiatives were honored together during the San Francisco 1989 Beyond War Award Ceremony. The word Koinonia means “belonging together” or “communion by intimate participation”.

From 2003-2007, the Dialogue group partnered with Camp Tawonga over five years to bring hundreds of adults and youth from 50 different towns in Palestine and Israel to successfully live and communicate together at the Palestinian-Jewish Family Peacemakers Camp — Oseh Shalom – Sanea al-Salam.

Since 2007, six how-to documentary films have been created. The most useful has been the 2012 Dialogue in Nigeria: Muslims & Christians Creating Their Future. The films all stream freely online, and over 13,000 DVDs have been requested from from all continents and every U.S. state including citizens from 2,594 institutions, 2,601 cities, in 82 nations.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

Sustained Dialogue
Compassionate Listening
Bohm Dialogue

What was your role in the project?
We co-founded and hosted the first 1992 gatherings in our home. With monthly 2-1/2 hour meetings now rotating among different participants’ homes, we continue to shepherd both the original San Mateo group (254 meetings) and the San Francisco gatherings (172 meetings).

What issues did the project primarily address?

Interfaith conflict
Race and racism
Education
Human rights

Lessons Learned
1. Time, Dedication, and Patience are required for successful Sustained Dialogue, trust, learning to listen, relationship-healing, and collective cooperation and creativity.

2. Beginning a Dialogue — finding paticipants and convening the first meeting — requires inordinate totality, time, and persistence.

3. Sustaining an ongoing group also requires a person or core team with a vision and “religious” dedication to the people.

Where to learn more about the project:
FILM — 20 Years of Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue (1992-2012)
http://archive.org/details/20YearsOfPalestinian-jewishLivingRoomDialogue

Several hundred outreach activities
http://traubman.igc.org/dg-prog.htm

Six of the Dialogue’s how-to documentary films
http://traubman.igc.org/vids2007.htm

Poverty & Wealth in America: the National Dialogue Network begins coordinated conversations

Posted on September 25, 2013 by NCDD Community

This post was submitted by John Spady of the National Dialogue Network via our Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have field news you want to share with the rest of us? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

NCDD member John Spady, who received our 2012 Catalyst Award for Civic Infrastructure, has announced that the National Dialogue Network achieved a major milestone on September 18 when it released its public Conversation Kit on the topic of Poverty & Wealth in America for voluntary and coordinated national conversations. To remember why NDN decided on this issue, check out their their May update here.

Groups and individuals are now invited to join the effort. Click the “Get Involved” button on the NDN home page and take an action on the topic. An important first action is to simply download the Conversation Kit, then ask your friends, family, neighbors, or community to join in and inform the national dialogue.

The National Dialogue Network coordinates distinct individual and community conversations — giving everyone a “sense of place” and voice within the larger national dialogue. NDN’s dedicated volunteer’s seek to revitalize and promote civic infrastructures within communities where all who choose to participate will impact the national conversation by:

Focusing intently on an issue over time with others;
Listening to the opinions and ideas being discussed in your community and across the United States; and
Speaking up about your own opinions and ideas in conversations with your family, friends & community.

Jim Wallis, President and Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners Magazine, appeared prescient about the NDN topic when he wrote in the March-April 1999 issue:

“The growing economic inequality of American life presents the most crucial moral issue for the health of democracy, according to historian James MacGregor Burns. It’s an issue that affects almost every other issue, from campaign finance to corporate welfare to the daily priorities of the U.S. Congress. The widening gap between the top and bottom of American society is now the 900-pound gorilla lurking in the background of every political discussion. It’s just sitting there, but nobody is talking about it. It’s time we started talking about it. Our moral integrity demands it. And the common good requires it.”

The NDN is appealing to participants and the general public to raise at least another $10,000 for 2014 so they can continue to develop processes and content for another year of national dialogue. Any amounts raised over $15,000 will be used to develop more professional content, coordination, and promotional grants. Donations can be made online at www.GoFundMe.com/NatDialogue.

Finally, the NDN is grateful to the people who volunteered their hearts and hands to make this project happen. Their collaborations are exactly what NCDD intended when it promoted the Catalyst Awards and NDN acknowledges and memorializes their contributions below:

2013 NDN Conversation Guide Volunteers:
Mary Dumas, John Spady, John Perkins, Dyck Dewid, Colin Gallagher, Craig Paterson, and Fedor Ovchinnikov.

2013 NDN Working Group Members:
John Spady, Mary Dumas, Colin Gallagher, Ben Roberts, Craig Paterson, Roshan Bliss, Vanessa Roebuck, John Perkins, Dyck Dewid, Fedor Ovchinnikov, Mark Frischmuth, and Michael Briand.

2013 NDN Advisory Group Members:
Linda Blong, Stephen Buckley, Daniel Clark, Lisa Heft, Peggy Holman, Don LaCombe, Stephanie Nestlerode, Steve Strachan, Sarah Thomson, Faith Trimble, and Rosa Zubizarreta.

Making Municipal Laws More Accessible

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

We were quite impressed with the updated version of an innovative tool that our friends at the OpenGov Foundation have been working on that is called BaltimoreCode.org. The website is designed to make the laws that govern Baltimore not only open and transparent, but open for comment, criticism, or input from everyday citizens.

Today, BaltimoreCode.org doesn’t just give you a Google-level law search engine. It doesn’t just give you a modern, user-friendly experience. Now, you can speak out and comment directly on the laws of Baltimore City.

That’s right. When you discover a law that isn’t working well for Baltimoreans, or that is a massive headache for you, you can quickly and easily identify it right there on the same page.

With municipal, state, and federal laws and their interactions being more complex than ever, this nifty tool could provide a great jumping off point for broader accountability, transparency, and participation in our laws.

You can read the original post about the new update on OpenGov Foundation’s blog here, or go straight to the www.BaltimoreCode.org to find out more.

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Category Archives: From the Community

Migrant Farmworkers Project (Featured D&D Story)

International public engagement news & domestic learning opportunities

Collective Impact: A Game Changing Model for the Social Sector

Phase I:

Phase II:

Phase III:

Report Back on Mental Health in Kansas City

Collaborative Master Planning (Featured D&D Story)

Disaporas in Dialogue (Featured D&D Story)

New NIF Issue Guide: Who Protects Our Privacy?

Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogues (Featured D&D Story)

Poverty & Wealth in America: the National Dialogue Network begins coordinated conversations

Making Municipal Laws More Accessible