Category Archives: From the Community

New EvDem Documentary on Youth Mental Health Dialogue

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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.

EvDem LogoWhen 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.

New EvDem Documentary on Youth Mental Health Dialogue

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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.

EvDem LogoWhen 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.

Featured D&D Story: Class Discussion on Gun Violence

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Today we’d like to feature a great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, a class discussion on gun violence from University of Missouri. This mini case study was submitted by NCDD supporting member Sarah Read of the Communications Center, Inc. via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add YOUR dialogue story today! 

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project: Class Discussions on Gun Violence

Description

Last summer I was asked to redesign and teach the Public Policy Dispute Resolution class at the University of Missouri School of Law which I then taught in the fall semester. At the outset of the semester, the students were asked to write an essay about why they had enrolled and what they hoped to learn.

The majority of those essays reflected the students’ deep concerns, as citizens, with the partisan nature of our political discourse and their frustration at how quickly discussions on difficult issues, even with friends and family, turned into name-calling and debate. The students expressed a desire to better understand and address such things as “media-fueled divisiveness”, lack of “nuance in everyday politics”, and “polarization”. They also asked to learn about how points of view form, how policies are made, how to help opposing groups communicate, and how to “explore the area between two extreme views.”

These questions were discussed in the first part of the semester when we focused on skills such as conflict mapping, question framing, and use of non-adversarial dialogue patterns, and the use of different processes to navigate conflict. The last third of the semester focused on actually applying this learning to a difficult dialogue, and the topic chosen by the class was issues relating to gun control or violence.

The classes that followed were designed to allow the students to directly experience how the choice and sequencing of dialogue structures (here informal dialogue, through a World Cafe type forum, to a more deliberative issue forum), paired with dialogue-based phrasing, can change the usual scripts used in discussion of a politicized, highly charged issue like gun violence.

To focus the discussion students were given a real-world hypothetical of adopting a policy on who could carry guns in public schools. This hypothetical used the demographics of an identified nearby school district and a law that had been recently adopted in Kansas. Class members came into the discussions with a wide range of viewpoints (which had been reflected in their prior essays) and were loosely assigned roles as community members.

The two students who agreed to serve as (i) a school board member highly supportive of both the law and of allowing more guns in the schools, and (ii) the superintendent responsible for managing budgets, safety, personnel, and overall administration, received more detailed supporting information for their roles. They were instructed to raise or share thoughts and information as seemed natural or appropriate in the discussions.

Although starting from very different places, the students were (to their surprise), over three sessions, able to reach unanimous agreement on an interim policy that could be placed into effect immediately. Much of this progress had to do with how the dialogues were sequenced.

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

  • National Issues Forums
  • World Cafe
  • Conversation Cafe

What was your role in the project?

Professor / Convener

What issues did the project primarily address?

  • Crime and safety
  • Education
  • Partisan divide

Lessons Learned

The sequencing of different dialogue processes, with time off between sessions, when done thoughtfully, can substantially lessen the overall in-person time needed for groups to come to agreement. Sequencing also allows for better option development, and promotes more productive deliberations at the time deliberative thinking is required. This is because successful resolution of complex issues requires integrative thinking about several different factors – information, interests, values, and rules or standards.

Integrative thinking takes time. Sequencing discussions can provide the necessary time for new ideas and options to emerge. Effective integrative thinking within a group also takes trust in the others that you are making decisions with. Without trust, information is discounted and risk to one’s personal interests is likely to take precedence over the effects on others in the community.

Simply put, building trust requires an effort to build relationships. Building relationships also takes time, and multiple contacts. By sequencing conversations so that deliberation does not occur too soon allows for better relationship development.

Where to learn more about the project:

Read full series of posts here: http://buildingdialogue.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/teaching-the-navigation-of-difficult-dialogues-intro.

Featured D&D Story: Class Discussion on Gun Violence

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Today we’d like to feature a great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, a class discussion on gun violence from University of Missouri. This mini case study was submitted by NCDD supporting member Sarah Read of the Communications Center, Inc. via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add YOUR dialogue story today! 

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project: Class Discussions on Gun Violence

Description

Last summer I was asked to redesign and teach the Public Policy Dispute Resolution class at the University of Missouri School of Law which I then taught in the fall semester. At the outset of the semester, the students were asked to write an essay about why they had enrolled and what they hoped to learn.

The majority of those essays reflected the students’ deep concerns, as citizens, with the partisan nature of our political discourse and their frustration at how quickly discussions on difficult issues, even with friends and family, turned into name-calling and debate. The students expressed a desire to better understand and address such things as “media-fueled divisiveness”, lack of “nuance in everyday politics”, and “polarization”. They also asked to learn about how points of view form, how policies are made, how to help opposing groups communicate, and how to “explore the area between two extreme views.”

These questions were discussed in the first part of the semester when we focused on skills such as conflict mapping, question framing, and use of non-adversarial dialogue patterns, and the use of different processes to navigate conflict. The last third of the semester focused on actually applying this learning to a difficult dialogue, and the topic chosen by the class was issues relating to gun control or violence.

The classes that followed were designed to allow the students to directly experience how the choice and sequencing of dialogue structures (here informal dialogue, through a World Cafe type forum, to a more deliberative issue forum), paired with dialogue-based phrasing, can change the usual scripts used in discussion of a politicized, highly charged issue like gun violence.

To focus the discussion students were given a real-world hypothetical of adopting a policy on who could carry guns in public schools. This hypothetical used the demographics of an identified nearby school district and a law that had been recently adopted in Kansas. Class members came into the discussions with a wide range of viewpoints (which had been reflected in their prior essays) and were loosely assigned roles as community members.

The two students who agreed to serve as (i) a school board member highly supportive of both the law and of allowing more guns in the schools, and (ii) the superintendent responsible for managing budgets, safety, personnel, and overall administration, received more detailed supporting information for their roles. They were instructed to raise or share thoughts and information as seemed natural or appropriate in the discussions.

Although starting from very different places, the students were (to their surprise), over three sessions, able to reach unanimous agreement on an interim policy that could be placed into effect immediately. Much of this progress had to do with how the dialogues were sequenced.

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

  • National Issues Forums
  • World Cafe
  • Conversation Cafe

What was your role in the project?

Professor / Convener

What issues did the project primarily address?

  • Crime and safety
  • Education
  • Partisan divide

Lessons Learned

The sequencing of different dialogue processes, with time off between sessions, when done thoughtfully, can substantially lessen the overall in-person time needed for groups to come to agreement. Sequencing also allows for better option development, and promotes more productive deliberations at the time deliberative thinking is required. This is because successful resolution of complex issues requires integrative thinking about several different factors – information, interests, values, and rules or standards.

Integrative thinking takes time. Sequencing discussions can provide the necessary time for new ideas and options to emerge. Effective integrative thinking within a group also takes trust in the others that you are making decisions with. Without trust, information is discounted and risk to one’s personal interests is likely to take precedence over the effects on others in the community.

Simply put, building trust requires an effort to build relationships. Building relationships also takes time, and multiple contacts. By sequencing conversations so that deliberation does not occur too soon allows for better relationship development.

Where to learn more about the project:

Read full series of posts here: http://buildingdialogue.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/teaching-the-navigation-of-difficult-dialogues-intro.

Announcing the 2014 All-American City Award Winners

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We hope you will join the National Civic League and NCDD in congratulating the winners of the 2014 All-American City Awards. The NCL, an NCDD member organization, used this year’s awards to give a special focus to healthy communities. We encourage you to read the NCL press release below or find more information at www.allamericacityaward.com.

NCL-logoThe National Civic League announced the ten winners of the 2014 All-America City Awards (AAC) tonight. The award is given each year to towns, cities, counties, neighborhoods and metropolitan regions that demonstrate outstanding civic accomplishments.

Listed alphabetically by state, the 2014 All-America Cities are:

  • Montgomery, Alabama
  • San Pablo, California
  • Brush!, Colorado
  • Fort Lauderdale, Florida
  • Cedar Rapids, Iowa
  • Chelsea, Massachusetts
  • Independence, Oregon
  • Brownsville, Texas
  • Hampton, Virginia
  • Eau Claire, Wisconsin

The criteria for winning an All-America City Award include impact, inclusiveness, public engagement and collaboration by the private, public and nonprofit sectors. This year AAC had a special focus on healthy communities.

More than 650 communities have won the All-America City Award since the program was launched in 1949. Some have won the award multiple times. To win, each community had to make a presentation to a jury of civic experts focusing on three outstanding examples of collaborative, community problem solving.

“Congratulations on a job well done,” said Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock in a message to the All-America Cities. “Not only have you proven your ability to innovate, work together and take on the complex challenges facing America’s communities, you’ve given inspiration and ideas to other communities across the country.”

For two days, groups of civic leaders and community activists met in Denver to present their stories of positive change to a jury of civic experts and to network and exchange ideas and insights.

The 2014 All-America Cities applied grassroots efforts to address such issues as childhood obesity, economic development, neighborhood revitalization, greenway development. They engaged the public directly in budget-making, city planning and communitywide fitness programs. They promoted local arts and cultural opportunities, reduced high school drop-out rates and turned polluted brownfields into parks.

“These communities are amazing,” said National Civic League President Gloria Rubio-Cortés. “They deserve to be recognized for the great work they are doing to make their communities stronger, healthier and more inclusive. They have found innovative ways of aligning existing programs to achieve greater impact.”

Sponsors of the 2014 All-America City Awards are Southwest Airlines, The Official Airline of the All-America City Awards; Campaign for Grade-Level Reading; Colorado Health Foundation; The Colorado Trust; Kaiser Permanente Denver/Boulder Offices; Alameda Gateway Community Association; Delta Dental of Colorado; FirstBank; Greenberg Traurig; Mile High United Way; PCL Construction; St. Anthony Hospital; City of Aurora, Colorado; City and County of Denver, Colorado; City of Lakewood, Colorado; City of Dublin, California; City of Gladstone, Missouri; City of Rancho Cordova, California; City of Hickory, North Carolina; and RubinBrown.

NCL is a 120-year old nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Denver, Colorado. Its mission is accomplished by fostering and sharing promising practices of local government and public engagement and celebrating the progress that can be achieved when people work together.

For more information contact Mike McGrath at the National Civic League at 303 571-4343; mikem@ncl.org, or visit the All-America City Blog at www.allamericacityaward.com or the NCL web site at www.ncl.org.

Schooler Op-Ed on Cantor’s (Lack of) Engagement

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We recently read a great editorial in the Star-Telegram penned by NCDD supporting member Larry Schooler that was too good not to share. Larry reflects on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s recent re-election loss amid claims that he was “out of touch” with is local constituency and what it says about public officials’ engagement practices. We encourage you to read Larry’s editorial below or to find the original here.

Elected Officials Must Always Be Engaged

Analysis of the surprising defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor included the notion, as one county GOP chair told The Washington Post, that voters “hadn’t seen him,” that Cantor had lost touch with his constituency after a long tenure in office and a greater focus on inside-the-Beltway politics than on his district.

Cantor would not be the first to face accusations of being “out of touch” with his electorate, and his defeat raises important questions about how elected officials at all levels should engage constituents after elections.

The “radio silence” that many officeholders adopt after taking office, particularly at the state and national levels, can leave many voters feeling unrepresented.

At the local level, mayors and public administrators in cities across America have begun to realize that those affected by a City Council’s decision should be able to affect those decisions.

Many cities have moved past the era in which people are asked to wait around for hours to speak for a mere three minutes on a topic of great concern to them, the fate of which was likely decided much earlier.

Many cities have taken innovative approaches to engaging the public in dialogue well before making any decisions about policy or budgeting. In cities like New York and Chicago, the public has been invited to “participatory budgeting” processes in which they propose and then vote on specific projects to receive city funding.

In cities like Austin and Fort Worth, citizens can attend a meeting in person or watch the same meeting on television or online. Afterward, they can interact with officials by phone, text message or social media, producing an audience of several thousand that represents a broader cross-section of the public than would otherwise be possible.

But few members of Congress deviate from the “town hall” medium of engagement: positioning themselves in front of a verbal firing squad at the front of an auditorium only to face a barrage of often hostile questions that leave them defensive and silence those who want to have a serious conversation.

Given Congress’s recess schedule and its use of social media, politically advantageous opportunities exist for more robust engagement between members and their constituents, both in person and online. Members of Congress could ask their constituents directly how to handle issues at hand.

Certainly, constituents could call or write, but in the absence of any invitation to provide input or personalized response, the exercise could seem futile.

In its “core values,” the International Association for Public Participation argues that governments should “provide participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way,” and “communicate to participants how their input affected the decision.”

Incumbents who don’t take heed could increasingly face a fate like Eric Cantor’s, tossed from office for being unengaged with voters.

You can find the original version of this Star-Examiner editorial at www.star-telegram.com/2014/06/12/5896487/elected-officials-must-always.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy.

Grassroots Grantmakers Seeks New ED

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We recently saw theannouncment that NCDD member Janis Foster Richardson will be stepping down as executive director of a great organization, Grassroots Grantmakers, and that the search is on for a new ED. We wish Janis the best of luck in her transition, but we also hope that other NCDD members will be interested in the ED position, so we encourage you to read the announcement below or find out more at www.grassrootsgrantmakers.org.

Greetings to all in the Grassroots Grantmakers network.

As you may know, we will be bidding a fond farewell to our long-time Executive Director, the incomparable Janis Foster Richardson, in the near future. The Grassroots Grantmakers’ board is working on our executive transition, and Janis has very helpfully agreed to postpone her departure until we have her successor on board.

We would like to ask your assistance in identifying that special person to take over the leadership of our network. You can find a description of the position by clicking here. We would be so grateful if you would circulate this in your networks, and perhaps even think of that special person, maybe someone you know would be great but who isn’t even looking for a job, and reach out to him or her on our behalf. We strongly believe that our next director is already known within our network of friends and colleagues.

If you or anyone with whom you are in contact would like to discuss this position or get more details, please do not hesitate to contact Patrick Horvath at phorvath@denverfoundation.org, or to reach out to Janis directly at janis@grassrootsgrantmakers.org.

Chronicle of Philanthropy Highlights PACE Project

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We just heard from our friends with Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) that their work with was featured recently in the prominent Chronicle of Philanthropy. The article was coauthored by two NCDD members and has some great insights, so we wanted to share their announcement and encourage you to read the article. You can read their announcement below.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has recently published “Foundations Must Rethink Their Ideas of Strategic Giving and Accountability”, an article that was co-authored by PACE Executive Director Chris Gates and Kettering Foundation Program Officer Brad Rourke.

The article is based on the upcoming PACE white paper, “Philanthropy and the Limits of Accountability: A Relationship of Respect and Clarity” authored by Rourke. PACE and Kettering have been working together for the past two years to better understand how the trends of ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ might impact the field of philanthropy, and how philanthropy might respond.

The paper was informed by a series of interviews and convenings, a distinguished group of foundation executives, non-profit leaders and thought leaders in the philanthropic and social sectors. Many of their insights and questions are reflected in the paper, which we be released soon as a free pdf download on the PACE website, www.pacefunders.org.

To read the Chronicle article, visit http://philanthropy.com/article/Foundations-Must-Rethink-What/146603.

Register for Frontiers of Democracy Conference July 16-18

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Tufts-logoIn case you hadn’t heard already, we wanted to make sure to tell encourage our NCDD members to consider attending the “Frontiers of Democracy” conference this July 16-18 in Boston, MA. Hosted annually at Tufts University, the conference has become an important venue for leaders in democratic thought and practice to gather to share ideas and network.

This year’s conference will feature talks from, among others, Ambassador Alan Solomont, the dean of Tisch College; Gloria Rubio-Cortes, president, National Civic League; Josh Lerner, Participatory Budgeting Project; John Gastil, Penn State (communication); Tina Nabatchi, Syracuse University (public administration); Shelby Brown, Executive Administrator, State of Connecticut’s Office of Governmental Accountability; Tim Eatman, Research Director, Imagining America; Sabeel Rahman, Harvard (government and law).

And to top it all off, the NCDD board and our director, Sandy Heierbacher, are hosting a workshop on engaging engagement practitioners. That workshop and others can be found in the detailed agenda, which features talks, discussions, and workshops on some of the most exciting and innovative work being done in our field, and you won’t want to miss it, so make sure to register here today!

You can get a taste of what the conference will focus on by reading the conference framing statement:

Who’s on the bus, and where is it going? The state of the civic field

Civic work is proliferating: many different kinds of people, working in different contexts and issue areas, are expanding the ways in which citizens engage with government, community, and each other. It is increasingly clear that growing inequality, social and political fragmentation, and lack of democratic opportunities are undermining our efforts to address public priorities such as health, education, poverty, the environment, and government reform.

But attempts to label the responses – as “civic engagement,” “collaborative governance,” “deliberative democracy,” or “public work” – or to articulate them as one movement or policy agenda under a heading like “civic renewal” or “stronger democracy” – immediately spark debates about substance, strategy, and language.

Though it is clear we have many principles and practices in common, we differ on what we should call this work and where it is headed. In order for “overlapping civic coalitions”* to form, the potential partners would have to work through goals, assumptions, and differences. Join us on July 16-18 at the 2014 “Frontiers of Democracy” conference, in downtown Boston, for an invigorating, argumentative, civil discussion on the state and future of the civic field.

Frontiers of Democracy is sponsored by Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, the Democracy Imperative, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, all of which have NCDD members in their leadership.

We know this conference will be a great space for NCDD members to gather, and we hope to see you then!

More information about the Frontiers of Democracy conference is available at http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/civic-studies/frontiers.

CM Conference Call on Inclusive Communities, Thurs. 6/12

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CM_logo-200pxWe are happy as always to announce that CommunityMatters, a collaborative effort in which NCDD is a partner, is hosting its next capacity building conference call this Thursday, June 12, from 4-5pm EST.  This hour-long conference call will focus on inclusivity and what it means to build inclusive communities.

This month’s call features thoughts from Moki Macias who is the Director of Community Building at the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site and from Tramunda Hodges who also works at the Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site as Community Building Coordinator.  Moki and Tramunda will share their experience with promoting equal treatment and opportunity in community decision-making, and we are sure it will be a great opportunity for NCDD members to gain helpful insights around inclusion in our work.

You can find more about the call at www.communitymatters.org/event/inclusive-communities, and we encourage you to register for the call today by clicking here. We hope to have you join us on Thursday!