Category Archives: JLA

Community Educators Youth Development Webinar Series

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We are pleased to announce an exciting series of webinars created by the good people at Friends for Youth in collaboration with our organizational partners at the Kettering Foundation. The webinars are aimed at raising awareness of the importance of educating the whole child, which requires a broader community effort both inside and outside our schools. We highly encourage NCDD members to find out more about the webinars below or on the FfY website and register for the first webinar on Feb. 19th.

It Takes All of Us: A Seminar Series About Educating and Developing Youth

Friends for Youth, in collaboration with the Kettering Foundation, is pleased to host a four-part series of no-cost interactive online sessions in which we will discuss ways you and your community can transform the way you think about developing and educating youth. The series features Dr. Patricia Moore Harbour, author of Community Educators: A Resource for Educating and Developing Our Youth, who will share practices that encompass developing the whole child from communities across the US. Using Dr. Harbour’s book as a foundation, we will explore these strategies – like mentoring, leadership and character development – in each session. Along with special guests, we aim to raise the awareness of the value and importance of community educators and to stimulate a national conversation about how essential it is to educate and develop the whole child.

Join us for all four no-cost webinars to share your experiences, learn more about how your community is a resource for transforming the education of youth, and strategize how to engage others in similar conversations. Each session will include highlights from Dr. Harbour’s book, a strategy that has worked in a local community, and interactive conversations with participants.

This online series is designed for youth mentoring professionals, professional educators, youth, community and business leaders, parents, government officials and employees, non-profit organizations, and anyone concerned about the education and development of young people. Our goal is for participants to learn with and from each other and be inspired to take action locally, to engage positively with the development of one child, an entire neighborhood, an existing youth organization, or a community-wide effort.

We will be giving away copies of Community Educators during each webinar and sharing key resources from the Kettering Foundation. To purchase your own copy of Community Educators, visit www.kettering.org/publications/community-educators-a-resource, from Amazon, Kindle, or Audible. This series also serves as the launch of the new Community Educators Facebook page for sustained conversation and building community.

  • Part One: Is School Reform Enough? – Wednesday, February 19, 2014
  • Part Two: Education is Broader than Just Schools – Wednesday, March 5, 2014
  • Part Three: Engaging the Public Makes a Difference – Wednesday, March 19, 2014
  • Part Four: Actions for You and Your Community to Take – Wednesday, April 2, 2014

All webinars take place from 11:00am – 12:15pm Pacific / 12:00 – 1:15pm Mountain / 1:00 – 2:15pm Central / 2:00 – 3:15pm Eastern.

For more information and to register online, go to www.friendsforyouth.org/mentoring-institute/webinars.

The Ecology of Democracy: Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future

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This 2014 book written by David Matthews, president of the Kettering Foundation, focuses on how to put more control in the hands of citizens when it comes to shaping the future of their communities and country. It was published by the Kettering Foundation Press.

From the Publisher:

Ecology-CoverThe Ecology of Democracy: Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future is for people who care deeply about their communities and their country but worry about problems that endanger their future and that of their children. Jobs are disappearing, or the jobs people want aren’t available. Health care costs keep going up, and the system seems harder to navigate. Many worry that our schools aren’t as good as they should be. The political system is mired in hyperpolarization. Citizens feel pushed to the sidelines.

Rather than giving in to despair and cynicism, some Americans are determined to have a stronger hand in shaping their future. Suspicious of big reforms and big institutions, they are starting where they are with what they have.

This book is also for governmental and nongovernmental organizations, as well as educational institutions that are trying to engage these citizens. Their efforts aren’t stopping the steady erosion of public confidence, so they are looking for a different kind of public participation.

The work of democracy is work. Here are some ideas about how it can be done in ways that put more control in the hands of citizens and help restore the legitimacy of our institutions.

David Mathews is a husband, father, grandfather, gardener, and a member of the Clarke County Historical Society. Although a nonpartisan independent, he served as a Cabinet officer in the Ford administration (Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare). He is a former president of the University of Alabama, where he taught history. Now president of a research organization, the Kettering Foundation, he writes books like Politics for People, which has been translated into eight languages. He doesn’t sail or ski and has no musical talents, but his dog loves him.

Table of Contents includes:

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introducing the People Who Make Our Democracy Work

Part I. Democracy Reconsidered

1. Systemic Problems of Self-Rule

2. Struggling for a Citizen-Centered Democracy

3. The Political Ecosystem

Part II. Citizens and Communities

4. “Here, Sir, the People Govern.” Really?

5. Putting the Public Back in the Public’s Business

6. Citizens: Involved and Informed?

7. Public Deliberation and Public Judgment

8. Framing Issues to Encourage Deliberation

9. Opportunities in Communities

10. Democratic Practices

Part III. Institutions, Professionals, and the Public

11. Bridging the Great Divide

12. Experiments in Realignment and Possibilities for Experiments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Ordering info: The book is currently available for purchase from the Kettering Foundation

Resource Link: http://kettering.org/publications/ecology-of-democracy/

Improving Deliberation on Health Care

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We wanted to share this thought-provoking commentary on a recent study on health care opinions conducted by our friends and partners at Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation. As our nation continues to grapple with reforming our health care system, we in the engagement community have a special role to play in helping our communities decide how to tackle the big questions of reform. We hope you’ll take a moment to read the commentary below or find the original PA blog post here.

PublicAgenda-logoAs is evident in “Curbing Health Care Costs: Are Citizens Ready to Wrestle with Tough Choices?“, there are disconcerting contradictions and inconsistencies in Americans’ views on health care that indicate the need for continued public information and deliberation. Several of these contradictions are worth noting, as they may hold a key for developing successful approaches to engaging the public in policies and practices that enable quality care and controlled cost.

Disconcerting contradictions and inconsistencies in Americans’ views on health care indicate the need for continued public information and deliberation.

As the report notes in its introduction, the current cost crisis is certainly not new, yet public consciousness and a sense of urgency have begun emerging only in the past five years. The reasons are many: unlike all other consumer services, the majority of health-care costs are indirect, handled through a third-party payer. Out-of-pocket costs were historically an issue only for the poor, uninsured and underinsured. The rest of the nation remained fairly protected and blissfully unaware. But those days have passed.

Many of the findings in this study ring true with our own at the American Institutes for Research and our Center for Patient and Consumer Engagement. Recent deliberations across the country that we conducted for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found similar public interest in information, a variety of perspectives and a desire for a place at the table as solutions are found and implemented. As in the deliberations we conducted, the study participants walked in with both misinformation and an individual, rather than a social, perspective on costs.

It is no wonder that health consumers, who are informed more by direct marketing than science or policy analysis about health care, indicate in this study their belief that specialists and renowned hospitals justifiably cost more. Our own 2010 study found that most consumers believed that more care, newer care, and more expensive care was better. However, this study also shows the extent to which patients understand that doctors may order too many tests and treatments because they are financially motivated to do so.

These results, along with other similar findings, need to bolster the efforts now underway to engage consumers and patients in cost payment reform at a variety of levels.

There are many encouraging signs from this study, however, that need additional fostering. Our own experience echoes the experience in this study of witnessing a shift in perspective as participants become informed, an eagerness to learn more about the issue of health-care costs, and a sense of duty in “wrestling” with the complexities of health-care costs.

These results, along with other similar findings, need to bolster the efforts now underway — funded by both federal agencies and private foundations — to engage consumers and patients in cost payment reform at a variety of levels, ranging from cost-effectiveness conversations when deciding treatment with a doctor to engagement at clinics and hospitals considering new forms of payment systems, such as bundled payments.

Critical to the effort is the need for consumers to demand that cost and quality remain on the table together. Accountable Care Organizations, Patient-Centered Medical Homes, and a variety of new models for care are seeking both reduced costs and increased quality, and many are committed to involving patients and consumers in their efforts as the ultimate end-users of their work. We can only hope that a similar spirit of engagement can be found in public policy settings. Our patients have much to add to those discussions.

Envisioning the Role of Facilitation in Public Deliberation

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This 2013 article by Kara Dillard argues that academic research has neglected a critical factor in promoting successful citizen deliberation: the facilitator. In outlining a continuum of a facilitator’s level of involvement in deliberative dialogues, the author finds that facilitators are important to the forum process. More academic investigations into facilitator actions should reveal more of the logic that turns everyday political talk into rigorously deliberative forums emphasizing quality argument and good decision-making.

ABSTRACT
Academic research has neglected a critical factor in promoting successful citizen deliberation: the public forum facilitator. Facilitators create the discursive framework needed to make deliberation happen while setting the tone and tenor for how and what participants discuss. This essay brings facilitators more clearly into scholarly discussions about deliberative practice by offering an expanded and nuanced notion of facilitation in action. I modify David Ryfe’s continuum of involvement concept to outline three distinct types of facilitators: passive, moderate, and involved. Using this continuum, I investigate how various moves, types of talk, and discursive strategies used by each of these facilitators differ during six National Issues Forums style deliberations. Results demonstrate that most facilitators are not neutral, inactive participants in deliberative forums. Analysis indicates that the pedagogical choices made by facilitators about their involvement in forums affect deliberative talk and trajectories. Scholars evaluating deliberation should take into account facilitation and its different dimensions.

Citation:  Dillard, K.N. (2013). Envisioning the role of facilitation in public deliberation. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41, 3, 217-235.

Resource Link: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00909882.2013.826813#.UrdW8mRDunE

Nelson Mandela: His Legacy to Democracy

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We recently read an inspiring piece from the Kettering Foundation, an NCDD member organization, that we hope you will take a moment to read. It is a heartfelt tribute to the amazing legacy of the late Nelson Mandela, written by KF Interntional Resident and graduate student at the the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Jaco Roets. You can read it below or find the original here.

Mandela’s work in national reconciliation after his release from prison is perhaps one of the most significant examples in recent history of the power of dialogue to transform conflict. As dialogue and democracy practitioners, we are all heirs to his legacy, and we have some very big shoes to fill. This piece remind us of the importance of our work and the truly transformative impact it can have.

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Nelson Mandela stepped out of prison in February 1990 faced by a country more divided than ever. Celebrations surrounded his release, but as a nation South Africa was fragmented. Years of segregation and oppression have blinded citizens to the potential of collaboration towards positive change. Clouds of uncertainty and the smoke rising from violent clashes further obscured a shared vision for the future. And in this chaos, we discover the real Mandela. Mandela became what South Africa needed at the time. He gave us the courage to be who we needed to be. He was not perfect, yet he served as a voice for those who have been marginalized. He allowed us to rediscover our shared humanity.

In 1997 Mandela stepped down as president. His vision was of a nation of active citizens, allowing us to move away from years of debilitating paternalism suffered under colonialism and apartheid. One man could not drive the ideals of democracy alone. Democracy can only thrive where all citizens have the opportunity to agree and disagree concerning the road ahead. Mandela did not want to give us answers. Instead he chose to inspire us, allowing us to believe that if we work together, there can be a better life for all.

His long walk to freedom allowed us to consider the roads that we still needed to travel. He did not offer South Africa the solution to all ailments. He encouraged us to keep talking, to keep dreaming, and to keep on searching for solutions that would benefit us all. I would like to believe that South Africans will remember him for this. I hope that the world will remember him for this. His dream will remain; a vision of a nation where all had an opportunity to contribute and collaborate. A space where citizens have a voice, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, political orientation, religion or race. The power of Mandela did not lie in his politics or in his statesmanship. The power of Mandela can be seen in the reawakening of a people, eager to imagine a future that no one ever thought possible. The power of Mandela lies in bringing a diverse, divided public together. Ultimately he allowed us all to see that we are not that different at all. A rainy day in Johannesburg saw world leaders come together to say farewell to an icon. We are all different. We are often in conflict. We are rarely in agreement. But on that day, for a few hours, we were all Mandela’s children.

Hamba kahle Tata Madiba. In your spirit, we will continue to walk the unsteady road towards democracy. May we always cherish your ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony.

Jean Johnson: On the Debt, Citizens Want Action, Not Perfection

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My friend and colleague Jean Johnson had a great article published on the Huffington Post last month that I recommend NCDDers take a look at.

NIF-logoThe article, titled “On the Debt, Citizens Want Action, Not Perfection,” outlines three key observations from last year’s National Issues Forums on our country’s long-term budget and debt problems. NIF is a nonpartisan network of educational and community organizations that regularly convene people to exchange views on major issues. Throughout 2011 and 2012, the group brought typical citizens together in 24 states and the District of Columbia to deliberate on options for tackling the debt.

The article begins with a telling quote from one of the forum participants in Mississippi: “Right now, our representatives have loyalty to self first; loyalty to party second; and loyalty to country third. They need to reverse it.”

Jean, a Senior Fellow at Public Agenda, has long been associated with NIF, and she observed some of the debt forums and reviewed videos and transcripts of others. In 2-hour conversations, participants weighed ideas ranging from cutting federal spending and raising taxes to passing a balanced budget amendment to focusing on economic growth as the best way out.

Jean explains in the article:

Not surprisingly, people didn’t become budget experts in just one evening, nor did they agree chapter and verse on an explicit package of solutions. Even so, the vast majority of those attending approached this discussion with a sense of pragmatism and flexibility that often seems scarce in Washington.

Take a moment to read this important article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jean-johnson/on-the-debt-citizens-want_b_4218921.html.

Public Agenda’s New “Beyond the Polls” Project

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We are excited to share about a great new initiative from our partners at Public Agenda, in collaboration with the National Issues Forums and the Kettering Foundation. Together, they are launching Beyond the Polls, a new regular commentary on public opinion issues. We encourage everyone to check out the initial announcement about the project below, or find the original announcement here.

PublicAgenda-logoWelcome to Beyond the Polls, our regular commentary on what Americans are thinking about pivotal issues our country and communities face. Each month, we offer a second look — a deeper look — at public opinion. We try to put survey results in context and enrich them by drawing on our extensive experience listening to citizens in both research and community settings over the years.

Our aim is to explore and understand the hopes, values, concerns, and priorities people bring to today’s issues — the public questions and controversies we think about every day. Just as important, we want to juxtapose the views that polling typically captures with what happens to those views when citizens have a chance to absorb and weigh different options for addressing issues and hear what other citizens have to say about them.

So what led us to develop Beyond the Polls? Here is some of what’s behind the series:

  • Polls often reflect top-of-the-head thinking. Surveys capture what people may be thinking at any given time, depending on how they’re feeling about things, what they know, what they’ve heard, and what’s happening in their own lives and communities and in the media. Unless we also take a look at this context, polling results have limited value.
  • The public’s views are not static. Polling results can change over time as people move beyond this top-of-the-head thinking and consider the questions at hand more deeply. As Pubic Agenda co-founder Dan Yankelovich has pointed out, people’s views tend to shift based on whether or not they have had time and opportunities to learn about an issue, consider it from different perspectives and decide where they stand. When they do this, sometimes their thinking becomes clearer. Sometimes their outlook becomes less dogmatic and more flexible. Sometimes people re-arrange their priorities as they recognize and think through trade-offs. Sometimes people, by talking with others, discover something that is very important to them that may not have been evident beforehand. Polls can fail to discriminate between top-of-the-head reactions and these more stable views.
  • Leaders cherry-pick at times. With so many polls available, and so many people quoting them for all sorts of reasons, what appears in the media can be piecemeal and, at times, misleading. In addition to the reasons we mention above, survey results often change depending on how questions are asked and what aspect of an issue a survey organization chooses to address. Sometimes pundits, elected officials, candidates and others zero in on one or two poll results—the ones that best match their own preferences—and blithely ignore the rest. We don’t do that. We examine and comment on all the best polls and look at what they’re saying—taken together.
  • Polling can’t substitute for democracy. Don’t get us wrong, we love opinion polls. Public Agenda designs and conducts surveys, and the National Issues Forums and the Kettering Foundation regularly consult opinion research in their work to get citizens talking about tough problems and working together to solve them. But democracy means much more than conveying poll results on citizens’ preferences to elected officials. Citizens have a real job to do grappling with tough issues and listening to the views of others.
  • Sometimes polls are on the wrong side of history. Because all of us move through a learning curve as we think through issues and hear from others, polls can change dramatically over time. In some of the most important moments of our history, public opinion lagged behind the arc of change. For example, few public views have shifted more radically than those toward women in the workforce. In a 1938 Gallup poll, more than three quarters of respondents disapproved of “a married woman earning money in business or industry if she has a husband capable of supporting her.” Twenty-two percent approved. In the late 1980s, opinion had nearly reversed, with 77 percent approving and 22 percent disapproving. These days, the question seems outdated. Gallup and other polling organizations are now asking questions about equal pay for women and men staying home to care for the children. Historical shifts like this mean we need to view polling as one piece of information. Polling is not a full or complete rendering of what the American people support, or what they may come to support — and consider indispensable — over time.

We’re eager to hear your responses to Beyond the Polls. Sign up to receive an email update when we have a new Beyond the Polls post. And, if you have a question or issue that could benefit from our review, let us know. We’d be pleased to consider adding it to our list of potential topics. Interested in continuing the conversation? Join us on Twitter with the hashtag #BeyondPolls.

Original post: www.publicagenda.org/blogs/welcome-to-beyond-the-polls

Mental Illness in America: How Can We Address a Growing Problem? (NIF Issue Advisory)

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In October 2013, National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) released an Issue Advisory that contains materials that can be used in deliberating over the issue of the impact of mental illness in America. This “issue advisory” is not a full NIF issue guide, but a basic outline of the options, entitled Mental Illness in America: How Do We Address a Growing Problem? It can be downloaded here.

From the introduction…cover_mental_illness_advisory350

Many Americans share a sense that something is wrong with how we address mental health and mental illness. More and more of us are taking medications for depression, hyperactivity, and other disorders. Meanwhile, however, dangerous mental illnesses are going undetected and untreated.

According to some, recent violent incidents reflect the need to increase security and increase our ability to detect mental illness. Others point to increasing numbers of veterans returning from overseas with post-traumatic stress disorders as a major concern. One in five Americans will have mental health problems in any given year. Unaddressed mental illness hurts individuals and their families and results in lost productivity. In rare cases, it can result in violence.

This Issue Advisory presents a framework that asks: How can we reduce the impact of mental
illness in America?

This issue advisory presents three options for deliberation, along with their drawbacks:

  • Option One: Put Safety First – more preventive action is necessary to deal with mentally ill individuals who are potentially dangerous to themselves or others.
  • Option Two: Ensure Mental Health Services are Available to All Who Need them – people
    should be encouraged to take control over their own mental health and be provided the tools to do so.
  • Option Three: Let People Plot their Own Course – we should not rely on so many medical approaches and allow people the freedom to plot their own course to healthy lives.

Resource Link: http://nifi.org/stream_document.aspx?rID=25092&catID=6&itemID=25088&typeID=8 (pdf)

Webinar on Community Discussions & NIF Guides

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NIF-logoLast week, the American Library Association (ALA) hosted a one-hour webinar titled Guides for Community Discussions: National Issues Forums (NIF) and Others designed to help public conveners find out more about issue books, videos, and other guides available to help them bring their communities together to talk in productive, civil, and interesting ways. The webinar focused specifically on the resources provided by our partners at the National Issues Forums Institute.

If you missed the live webinar, don’t worry! The recording is now available online, and you can find it by clicking here. You can still hear the great insights and information shared by presenters Carolyn Caywood, and Nancy Kranich, both from ALA’s Center for Civic Life, and Patty Dineen from the National Issues Forum Institute. They review and show examples of available discussion-starting materials, describe how these guides can support engaging library programs, and give examples of how librarians have used them in their communities.

This webinar was the fifth in a civic engagement series produced by Programming Librarian and is sponsored by the ALA Center for Civic Life.  We encourage you to can find our more about the first four webinars at www.programminglibrarian.org/civic-engagement.html#.Ui9qXGRgZ38.

You can find out more about this webinar by checking out NIFI’s initial announcement of the webinar or its recent post about the recordings.