Category Archives: public participation

League of Extraordinary Trainers Spring Trainings

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We are pleased to share the announcement below from the League of Extraordinary Trainers (LET), an NCDD Organizational Member, about three great trainings they are offering this Spring. Make sure to note that dues-paying NCDD members can receive a 10-20% discount on all LET trainings – just one of the many great benefits that you get from becoming an NCDD member!

2014 IAP2 Training Events, presented by The League of Extraordinary Trainers

LeagueOfExtraordinaryTrainers-logo If you work in communications, public relations, public affairs, planning, public outreach and understanding, community development, advocacy, or lobbying, this training will help you to increase your skills and to be of even greater value to your employer. This is your chance to join the many thousands of practitioners worldwide who have completed the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) certificate training.

LET Event Dates, Locations, and On-Line Registration are always available at to view www.extraordinarytrainers.com/schedules. You can also download detailed brochures about the trainings at the League of Extraordinary Trainers’ website.

2014 IAP2 Certificate Program (composed of 3 classes):

Planning for Effective Public Participation (2 days)

Communications for Effective Public Participation (1 day)

Techniques for Effective Public Participation (2 days)

The next certificate program training dates and locations are as follows:

  • Austin, TX     April 14 – 18, 2014
  • Kansas City, MO     April 21 – 25, 2014
  • Nashville, TN     April 28 – May 2, 2014

Please check our website periodically as we are working to confirm additional 2014 event locations in Massachusetts, Illinois, and Oregon.

LET offers Early Bird Registration Discounts. Dues-paying NCDD members receive a 10% discount ($315 per training day) on all trainings — and a 20% ($280 per training day) discount if you register by the Early Bird Deadline. Email us directly to take advantage of your NCDD member discount info@extraordinarytrainers.com.

You always can find out more about other training, conference, and course discounts that are available to NCDD members by visiting www.ncdd.org/discounts.

Looking Ahead at Global Democracy in 2014

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We have previously highlighted the Challenges to Democracy blog from Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and we wanted to share one of their latest pieces on the year ahead for democracy around the world. You can read the article below or find the original piece here. 

Ash logoLooking ahead, 2014 is going to be a big year for democracy. According to The Economist, around 40 countries representing over 40% of the world’s population, and more than 50% of global GDP, will participate in elections this year.

Yet the pervasive mood in countries facing impending elections as well as those embroiled in people-led protest movements is that of disillusionment with politicians and (sometimes) elections. The calls for political accountability are becoming ever more emphatic. And in many cases the disenchantment is accompanied by an extreme polarization in voters’ choices.

It is interesting then to note that while the American voter seems to share this sense of disillusionment with politicians, it is not accompanied by a similar polarization in terms of political choices. If at all, the American voter seems to be losing interest in classic party affiliations.

What does the average American think about US efforts to promote democracy abroad? A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that only 18% of those interviewed believe that democracy promotion is a key foreign policy objective. This wariness with democracy promotion as a tool of foreign policy can partially be explained with the failed experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan and the prevailing conditions in the Middle East where many promising pro-democracy movements have disintegrated into chaos.

A key lesson is that any effort to promote or strengthen democracy without regard for political and cultural context is never a good idea. While increased participation, transparency and accountability remain goals worth pursuing, the practice of seeking to transplant Western-style democracy anywhere and everywhere is fraught with problems.

One aspect of this sort of ‘democratization’ is the creation of democratic institutions to replace existing well-functioning and popular traditional institutions. Replacing traditional institutions with propped-up institutions often leads to a diffusion of authority and accountability.

Lack of clarity in terms of roles and responsibilities perpetuates and even exacerbates the very corruption, inequity and injustice that democracy promotion programs intend to eradicate. Read more about an example from Afghanistan and another from Ghana, where consideration for context made all the difference.

Whether the efforts to strengthen democratic governance are endogenous or exogenous, it is important to remember that each case is distinct.  The year has barely begun and the news is full of the events in Ukraine, Thailand, Egypt and elsewhere. Contextual nuance will be the key to understanding the many democratic (and undemocratic) twists and turns countries over the world negotiate in the coming year.  2014 will indeed be a big year for democracy.

Awesome Interview of World Café’s Amy Lenzo

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We recently started reading a terrific interview series from the talented team at Collaborative Services on public participation lessons they have learned in the last year, and we wanted to share their insights with the NCDD community. The first interview in the series features the reflections of NCDD supporting member Amy Lenzo of the World Café - an organization whose founders are also NCDD founding members. You can read the interview below, or find the original on Collaborative Services’ blog by clicking here.

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The World Café: We Are Wiser Together

You may have heard the saying “If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.” Meaning if you aren’t actively participating, then you’re probably the topic being discussed or getting ready to be figuratively eaten. All the more reason to pull up a seat and actively engage in the discussions that matter to you.

Participating in large groups can be difficult, but one organization has developed a unique approach to make it easier for people just like you to be at the table for important civic discussions.

This week we start our series on successful public participation hearing from Amy Lenzo, the Director of World Café Learning Programs. The inspiration for the World Café came from a gathering of twenty academic and corporate leaders one rainy day at the home of World Café founders, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs. Since the rain prevented the group from starting their day on the patio, Brown and Isaacs set up make-shift café tables in their living room using TV tables fit with white easel paper as table cloths and vases with flowers as an alternative setting for their guests to gather for coffee and breakfast upon their arrival for their second day of key strategic dialogue on the field of Intellectual Capital.

Soon, and without any prompting, Brown and Isaacs noticed the small groups becoming deeply engaged in conversation and writing their thoughts and comments on the paper table cloths. Forty-five minutes later the suggestion was made for one host from each small group to stay at their table and for the rest of the members to move to different tables as a way for everyone to learn what had come out of the conversations happening in the other groups. From there the room was alive, the guests were excited and engaged, and the World Café method was born.

The World Café method emphasizes the importance of  creating a comfortable environment to draw people in. Just as with Brown and Isaacs’ group of academic and corporate leaders, small round tables with checkered tablecloths and vases with flowers help create the feeling of being at a café and make participating feel as easy as conversing over a cup of coffee with friends. Having a hospitable and inviting environment is important, especially when discussions have the potential to get heated.

The World Café method has resonated with cultures around the world, helping to establish a global common ground for public participation. This week we will learn more about the World Café’s global community and its method and process for successful public participation.

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How is the World Café approach different from traditional approaches to public engagement efforts?

The World Café is based on the premise that we are wiser together than any of us are alone, so it’s all about participation, and welcoming diversity so that we can learn from each other. It’s not a “top-down” communication process – each voice is valued equally and the focus is on sensing the “collective wisdom” that can exist between us when we really listen to each other and pay attention to the patterns that emerge within our conversations.

Another unique characteristic of the World Café process is its capacity for both intimacy and scale.

World Cafes can engage very large numbers of people – They have been done successfully with many thousands of people – without losing the sense of intimacy and depth that 20-minute table conversations with no more than 4 people at a table can foster. It’s amazing how deep these table conversations can be even among strangers, while the rotating rounds of conversation & whole group harvest give participants an experience of the larger picture.

Credit: The World Café Flickr

Is there an ideal use of the World Café approach or can it be applied to all public gatherings?

Well, there are situations where the World Café is not the best approach – when the group is less than 12 people, say, or when the result of the conversation is already known, e.g. when you just want to get information across. But when you have more than 12 people and there is respect for the innate capacity of people to address what is most important to them, the World Café can work well for any event, be it community-based and public or private including corporate, organizational, and institutional.

The World Café is based on seven design principles. How were these principles developed?

The World Café process itself happened spontaneously in response to particular circumstances during an international gathering of Intellectual Capital pioneers at Juanita Brown’s home. Subsequently, when it was clear that something extraordinary had happened that day, Juanita and colleagues Finn Voltoft and David Isaacs, with help from many others, embarked upon a serious investigation to find out exactly what conditions led to the experience and research whether or not the experience could be replicated. The result of this research gave rise to the formulation of the seven World Café design principles, which form the basis for World Café practice.

Is one or some of the principles more integral to fostering meaningful conversations? Or do they all play an equal part?

Every World Café design principle is a key element within the set. They can be used individually as powerful aids to meaningful conversation, and there are many synergies among them, but when the seven design principles are utilized in concert together they create the conditions whereby something truly extraordinary can occur.

Tell us more about the World Café online community. When did this start and how has it evolved over the years?

The international network of people using the World Café has grown exponentially ever since the World Café method was introduced. This growth was organic – largely through experience or word of mouth – and steady. Within a few years there were more than a thousand people engaging in conversation about their experiences hosting or participating in World Café. At that point, the World Café Community Foundation commissioned the first online community platform to support these conversations within what we have come to call a “community of practice.”

Credit: World Café

Online platforms have changed and been re-designed, but the number of people in the World Café online community continues to grow. There are currently almost 4,500 members from every continent, and almost every country in the World Café online community platform and over 2,000 in a Linkedin group. In addition, people all over the world share their World Café photos on Flickr and participate in a variety of other social media conversations online.

The actual number of practitioners and those who have experienced a World Café is of course many, many times higher. And now, as our online learning programs expand (we’re launching a new Masters Level course in World Café and Appreciative Inquiry with Fielding Graduate University in the Fall 2014 term), the numbers of actively engaged new practitioners continue to grow exponentially.

You’ve coined the term “conversational leader.” Can you explain the responsibilities of a conversational leader and what processes they should follow to successfully engage their participants?

We didn’t coin the term – World Café host Carolyn Baldwin did – but we have continued to evolve and develop the idea. Juanita Brown and Tom Hurley wrote a wonderful article on this subject, which is available as a free download on our website. Basically, the idea is that conversational leaders recognize conversation as a core meaning-making process and consciously create opportunities for meaningful conversation to occur in their organizations, as well as fruitfully utilize the results of those conversations.

The World Café approach is used by organizations and educational institutions around the world. What are some of the best examples of this approach in action that you have seen?

There are so many! We have an impact map on the World Café website with some great examples but I think one of the most striking was a World Café hosted in Tel Aviv. It was a reasonably ambitious event from the beginning – planned and set up as an outdoor World Café to engage up to 4,000 Israelis in a political and social conversation about transforming their country for the better – but according to reports from the hosts and other media, over 10,000 people showed up!

Why do you think this approach resonates with so many different cultures?

Conversation is a core human activity. We all do it; it’s fundamental to our nature, whatever our culture. We all crave the opportunity to be heard as we speak to others about things that really matter to us, and it is always moving to hear what really matters to others. Being part of a World Café conversation where there is a truly diverse set of participants – all of whom are welcomed and their perspectives valued – can be a life-changing experience.

An example of graphic recording from the Reno Climate Change Café.
(Credit: The World Café Flickr)

Graphic recording (capturing people’s idea’s and expressions in words, images and color – as they are being spoken) is recommended as part of the World Café approach. While recording the input received is a valuable practice, and many times a requirement for most public engagement opportunities, how does graphic recording benefit the participant?

From my perspective it’s the participant that gains most of all by having a graphic listener/recorder present as part of the World Café hosting team! Professional graphic facilitators are trained in ways that make them very valuable in capturing the essence of what is being shared during the harvesting process, but they are also invaluable collaborators for things like finding the right questions to help participants cut to the heart of the issue. During the harvest, having their words and ideas faithfully reflected is very powerful for the participant who has shared them, and seeing the collective meaning literally take form in front of the group is very valuable for the whole group – a fabulous fulfillment of the 7th World Café principle to “share collective discoveries.”

Which strategies could our readers take with them to help them become better communicators?

I think the main skill we can all develop in becoming better communicators is that of deep listening. And by deep listening I mean not just listening to understand another person’s point of view, although that can be very valuable in and of itself, but listening for what we can learn from the differences in perspective we hear. In other words, stepping outside of our own opinion in order to listen and learn from diverse points of view. That skill or strategy alone could not only make us better communicators, but it might even change the world for the better.

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Thank you Amy for sharing your insights and for working to change the world for the better.

This interview is part of a blog series from Collaborative Services, Inc. - a public outreach firm in San Diego, California that brings people together from their individual spheres and disciplines to improve communities and help people adapt to an ever-changing world. The firm uses inter-disciplinary efforts to manage and provide services in stakeholder involvement, marketing and communications, and public affairs. The firm’s award-winning services have spanned the western region of the United States from Tacoma, Washington to the Mexico Port of Entry.

We thank Collaborative Services for allowing NCDD to learn along with them, and we encourage our members to visit their blog by clicking here. You can find the original version of the above article at www.collaborativeservicesinc.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/the-world-cafe-we-are-wiser-together.

Leadership Building Call from CommunityMatters, Feb. 13th

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CM_logo-200pxWe are pleased to invite NCDD members once again to join our partners at CommunityMatters for the next installation in their capacity-building call series, which is jointly hosted by the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design. This month’s call is titled “Building Leadership for the Long Haul”, and it will be taking place next Thursday, February 13th, from 3 – 4:15pm Eastern Time.

The call will feature insights on developing leaders in our communities from Milan Wall of the Heartland Center for Leadership Development. The folks at CM describe the upcoming call this way:

What’s the difference between a plan that’s put into place and one that’s put on a shelf? People. If you want something to show for your hard work, you need to build strong local leadership and grassroots support. This webinar will focus on how to grow effective local leaders who can nurture volunteers, corral resources and build the public support that can move community design or planning work from paper to practice.

Join Milan Wall from the Heartland Center for Leadership Development to learn about their research on keys to thriving communities and effective leadership. Milan will describe characteristics of effective local leaders, roles and responsibilities to guide community action, and tips for recruiting new leaders in a changing world.

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

To help get mentally prepared for the call, we also suggest that you check out the most recent CM blog post by Ariana McBride about community leadership. The post is full of helpful resources and links, and we’ve included it below. You can also find the original here.

We hope to hear you on the call next week!

What It Takes to Be an Effective Community Leader

When I think of the effective community leaders I’ve met what stands out to me is that no one image fits them all. Sure, I remember instances of long standing, charismatic city councilors leading the charge for a new initiative. But I’ve got just as many stories of soft spoken, unheralded volunteers making a difference in their communities. The traditional image of the lone hero with all the answers is not what drives change in most places. You’ve got to know what you need in a leader to really get things done based on your community’s unique situation.

I’m not alone in this assertion. Research, like that of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, points to how leadership has evolved over time and how the most effective leaders have core qualities like inspiring a shared vision and empowering other people to take action. And while communities will still have traditional strong leaders the most successful will learn how to share leadership, the Centre for Innovative and Entrepreneurial Leadership (CIEL) suggests. As CIEL says this means recognizing “that everyone is a leader in some respect.”

In order to embrace the power of shared leadership we’ve got to learn how to creatively leverage the different talents and skills that people offer. Take the example of the outdoor library classroom we heard about on a recent CommunityMatters call. The Richfield Branch Library in Akron, OH was able to create a wonderful space because it drew on the passion of a librarian and the skills of a local gardening club. Tools like capacity inventories are helpful for getting people to see what they can contribute to a local effort.

Much of community leadership is recognizing the big and small contributions of all people in making their city or town a better place. Drew Dudley talks about this as “everyday leadership.” In this funny video, Drew shares what he calls one story of the “lollipop moment”, which speaks to how we all need to do a better job at acknowledging how leadership shows up in everyday life. Perhaps the biggest challenge of community leadership is to understand what kind of leaders your town needs based on your unique local context.

Many organizations have ways of assessing a community’s current conditions, like CIEL’s Community Life Cycles Matrix or the Harwood Institute’s Community Rhythms, which can be helpful starting points for figuring out what the best next steps are for your town.

If you do community work in small towns or big cities you know that we are up against myriad challenges and the more people that we can inspire to become civically involved, the better. The good news is that leaders can be cultivated through a variety of development programs. As Vince Lombardi once said, “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work.”

If you are ready to take on greater leadership in your community – or are looking for ways to inspire others to do so then our February 13th webinar is for you. We’ll be hosting a special 75-minute webinar where you’ll hear from Milan Wall, Co-Director of the Heartland Center for Leadership Development. Milan will describe characteristics of effective local leaders, roles and responsibilities for community action, and tips for recruiting and growing new leaders in a changing world. Milan has over 40 years of experience in contending with the challenges of small town change and is a respected leader in the community development field. He’ll give participants practical guidance through a thoughtful and interactive call experience.

Get ready to lead the way in 2014 by registering for the webinar today!

New Findings on Special Interests & Democracy

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Sandy recommended an important article today from Journalist’s Resource that details the results of recent empirical research on special interest groups’ influence on our democracy. The findings suggesting that interests groups contribute more to polarization than previously thought offer significant reason for us to pause and reflect as engagement practitioners. This must-read article is below in full, and you can find the original here.

Extreme voices: Interest groups and the misrepresentation of issue publics

by John Wihbey

The public’s ignorance on issues of policy and politics is frequently lamented — and little understood. On tests of civic knowledge, the results are often dismaying, although research suggests that asking about local and national issues can yield different results. Some of this ignorance may have a socio-economic basis. There are access to knowledge and media access issues that make the cost of understanding prohibitive for some. But one broader and more charitable way of interpreting this ignorance is as follows: Citizens are busy, and issues that are not salient or relevant in their daily lives are “costly” — in terms of time and effort — to comprehend. A 2013 study in Political Communication, “Self-Interest and Attention to News Among Issue Publics,” confirms that “individuals are more likely to follow news that affects their self-interest” — what academics call “selective exposure.” Why learn the tax code when you only fill out a simple return each year? What real advantage is it to know the names of all nine Supreme Court justices? Why spend precious time on development issues in South Asia when there are experts to take care of that? That’s why we have representative government, the argument goes, and advocacy groups on every conceivable issue to help figure out the details and produce policy. The people who really care about a given issue will organize a response.

That’s one political theory. For this theory to work in practice, however, there must be a basic match between some larger segment of the people and the strong, narrowly focused groups who shape the agenda. Otherwise, highly motivated groups just distort democracy, pushing agendas far more extreme than others who care about the same issue would favor. For a half-century now, political scientists have studied the behavior of what are called “issue publics,” or the groups who care about discrete issues. Think of issue publics as concentric circles of increasing interest, with the innermost circle as the actual “pressure group.” Hovering in the background, there remains a long-running debate about whether certain “special interests” corrupt the system, or whether the contending of interests in the public arena actually constitutes the very essence of democracy.

A 2013 study published in Public Opinion Quarterly, “Extreme Groups: Interest Groups and the Misrepresentation of Issue Publics,” looks to empirical evidence to help settle some of these debates, testing whether members of motivated groups are “giving voice” to wider public communities or pushing their own unrepresentative agendas. The authors — political scientists Ryan L. Claassen of Kent State University and Stephen P. Nicholson of the University of California, Merced — state that the prior “literature on issue publics has optimistically concluded that widespread political ignorance is not a problem for democracy because those affected by specific issues are well informed, involved, and represented.”

To assess this, Claassen and Nicholson analyze results from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) — comprising a representative sample of 36,500 people — and look at the views of 10 groups and their issues: AARP and social security privatization; unions and minimum wage; the Sierra Club and global warming; NARAL and abortion; National Right to Life and abortion; the Christian Coalition and gay marriage; the VFW and the Iraq War; the American Legion and the Iraq War; the Parent Teacher Association/Organization and education; and the NRA and gun control. By sorting among the citizens surveyed who have a “characteristic that is relevant to the interest group’s policy area,” Claassen and Nicholson attempt to compare the relative strength of views between active group members and inactive members of specific issue publics.

The study’s findings include:

  • The data furnish “consistent evidence that group members hold policy attitudes that are distinct from their counterparts in a broader issue public.” Distortion is a very real problem. In fact, the evidence suggests that a “policymaker guided by interest group representation, rather than a more comprehensive survey of issue public opinion, might actually come down on the wrong side of an issue in most cases.”
  • “Taken together, the results suggest that the policy distortion produced by interest groups may ultimately stem from those who are different, and more extreme, in their opinions, self-selecting into groups.”
  • These dynamics likely tilt the wider direction of U.S. politics: “Opinion distortion wrought by interest group representation is likely to contribute to political polarization more generally. When policymakers rely on interest groups to communicate the positions of issue publics, they perceive greater polarization than they would if they had a more accurate measure of issue public opinion.”

“A uniformly active issue public would ensure that the voices of those for whom the issue matters most are heard,” Claassen and Nicholson conclude. “But issue publics are not uniformly active. More problematic, those active in interest groups hold positions that are more extreme than, and often at odds with, the positions of less active members within the issue public.”

Related research: The findings line up with studies on what scholars call the phenomenon of “group polarization,” whereby like-minded individuals who affiliate tend to become more extreme in their positions over time. Recent research on political polarization, which has dramatically increased in the United States in recent years, has focused on the deep roots of the phenomenon as well as potential solutions. Further, scholars are studying whether or not the Internet is magnifying these trends more broadly.

Original article URL:  http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/polarization/extreme-voices-interest-groups-misrepresentation-issue-publics?utm_source=JR-email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JR-email#sthash.psRnh1at.dpuf

Apply for the “Best Practices in Citizen Participation” Distinction

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We want to make sure that NCDD members and member organizations hear about an exciting award you might be eligible for – the 8th “Best Practices in Citizen Participation” Distinction. The initiative for the award comes from The International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (OIDP or IOPD for short – their interchangeable, multi-lingual acronym), an important international body that NCDD belongs to as a member.

The awarding of the “Best Practices in Citizen Participation” distinction

…is meant to provide incentive for those who wish to initiate innovative experiences at the local level and disseminate those practices that facilitate the participation and involvement of citizens in elaborating and implementing public policies.

This award is meant to recognize those innovative experiences and ideas coordinated by local governments in the field of participative democracy that can to be replicated elsewhere.

It is understood that participative processes should, by necessity, lead to higher levels of equality, a stronger sense of citizenship, a greater sense of legitimacy and confidence in public powers, and greater effectiveness in public management practice.

You can find the full eligibility criteria by clicking here, but competition is open to

…all local governments, municipal entities and extra-municipal entities that are OIDP members and have promoted an experience or idea involving citizen participation. All such experiences must have taken place within a maximum of four years preceding the convocation, and they must be in effect by the time the candidacy presentation is mailed.

The application period goes from February 3rd to March 7th, so don’t wait to get started. The award winners will be announced at the 2014 OIDP Conference this June 3rd – 5th in Canoas, Brazil. We hope that some of you NCDDers will submit your projects and initiatives for consideration!

If you haven’t heard about the OIDP yet, we highly encourage you to check out their English website at www.OIDP.net/en. You can also find them on Facebook. The OIDP describes itself this way:

The International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (IOPD) is a space open to all cities in the world and all associations, organizations and research centers interested in learning about, exchanging impressions and applying experiences of participatory democracy on a local scale with the aim of deepening the roots of democracy in municipal government.

The network was created in 2001 within the framework of the European Commission’s URB-AL programme for decentralized cooperation. It was officially constituted in November 2001 during the 1st Annual Conference of the IOPD in Barcelona, where its internal operating regulations were approved. Since 2006 the IOPD has coordinated with United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), at present the IOPD is contributing to provide local government’s innovative knowledge in the specific area of citizens’ participation.

In November 2011 the IOPD decided to recover and place emphasis on its original goal of becoming a space for the production of knowledge and the exchange of useful experiences for the towns and cities that make up the network. Therefore the IOPD assumed the challenge of serving as a reflection in matters of participatory democracy at a worldwide level, in order to innovate and to recommend specific policies to public administrations, preferably local, throughout the world and to make the exchange of experiences its main working base.

We think it would be great to see more NCDD members become part of the OIDP – not to mention that you have to be a member to enter the competition – so we encourage you to check out their How to Join page and consider applying. We know that our members are undertaking some of the most innovative and successful public participation projects around, and that we can give any of the other entrants a good run for their money.

Please do let us know if you decide to apply, and best of luck to all of those in the competition!

How Iceland Changed the Way We Think About the World

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We are pleased to highlight the post below, which came from NCDD member David Inman of Wilma’s Wish Productions. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Then you’re invited to use our Submit to Blog form to share your news post on the NCDD Blog. Click here to find out more!

Jaws dropped around the world when the Icelandic banking system collapsed in 2008. One of the biggest success stories of western industrialization, Iceland’s economy was seen as both stable and affluent. Then the three main privately owned banks crumbled, taking just about everyone in the small, 300,000 person population with them. Tears fell to the ground and hands flew to the air as a vibrant indignation beat through the streets of Reykjavik in protest against the hidden, faulted government regulation of the banking system. The Prime Minister was forced to resign, a new government stepped in, and the entire population was at risk of losing hope.

Shortly thereafter, something incredible happened.

The population surged and moved mountains. Dialogue facilitated the propagation of a constitutional assembly. Dialogue between laymen, professionals, farmers, businessmen, theologians, truck drivers. Dialogue spanning the entire swath of societal positions. Conversations at home, in small groups, abroad, in loudly populated meeting halls. Dialogue.

With a population half the size of Seattle alone, Iceland’s dialogue probably doesn’t seem such a huge feat. Yet considering the range and application, the grandeur of what was happening became an astoundingly unique phenomenon. Together, Iceland’s population organized an assembly to draft a new constitution for their country. The old constitution, an adaptation of the Danish one that once governed Iceland as a colony, was adopted in the late 1940′s and proved incapable of adapting to the issues of current day society. With the banking collapse and the opaque operations of the old government, a new document which truly reflected the needs and cares of the people urgently weighed on the minds and hearts of all. Though facing skepticism and doubt, the assembly formed.

The documentary Blueberry Soup explains the feasibility of Iceland’s project a bit more. In a country where one in ten people are published authors, public arts and education is a passionate value, and in which the term “community” is in every sense of the word sincere, the incorporation of the population’s input was a natural step. But obstacles persisted. Disillusionment. Hopelessness. Frustration. Political opposition. Even anger over the attempt to fix anything fearfully based in concern that the assembly would add salt to the wound and make the population more dejected. Alongside these problems lay the entrenched reluctance of national news sources to report upon the assembly. Indeed, many members of the population didn’t even know what was happening until it was nearly done and over with.

Through dogmatic effort and constant reassurance from interested people around the world the assembly beat on and finished their draft within four and a half months. Tireless days spent hashing out ideas, examining comments from all over the country, and bringing diverse perspectives together in dialogue saw them to the end of the project. The only thing left to do in order for it to be ratified was pass it in a vote. Both the majority of the population as well as the parliament had to vote yes in order to institutionalize the new constitution. Tension was high. The population of Iceland voted ‘yes.’ The parliament voted ‘no.’ Never before seen by the world, the first binding social contract propagated through outreach, social media, and crowd sourcing failed to pass. And yet it was not a failure, not quite.

What astounded me upon watching the documentary for the first time and then later interviewing Eileen Jerrett, the director of Wilma’s Wish Productions, was the fact that, realistically, there was only a victory. Legitimized by its failure, the new constitution displayed the blaring faction between the Icelandic government and the population. People weren’t being listened to, commerce replaced citizenship, and the need for inter-professional dialogue became all the more pressing.

For us, the dialogue community both here and abroad, the effort of Iceland to draft a new constitution ought not go unnoticed. Demonstrating the vast, successful potential of social media to reach a broad audience and facilitate meaningful dialogue Iceland functions as a microcosmic example of what may successfully occur in the United Sates. Albeit privileged with a much smaller population that is rudimentarily grounded in civic involvement, Iceland’s efforts are not without potential for replication. But how might such efforts be reproduced? In what way can dialogue be made accessible to more people with varying levels of compatibility?

I think we can answer these questions. I know we can. In fact, let’s challenge ourselves as a national community. Let’s find the underlying principle which pushes us all into civic engagement and break apart barriers of profession, age, opinion, and region.

You can find the trailer to Blueberry Soup here: http://vimeo.com/ondemand/blueberrysoup.

Learning from Chicago’s PB Challenges

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Participatory budgeting (“PB” for short) is an innovative form of empowered public engagement that has started proliferating in parts of Chicago, New York and California due to the leadership and hard work of one of our organizational members, the Participatory Budgeting Project.

PB is a process through which ordinary residents decide how to allocate government funds. Residents identify possible projects that could be funded, research them and develop them further, and then decide through a popular vote how to allocate the funds.

Initially developed in Brazil in the late ’80s, PB is finally picking up steam in the U.S. As part of its Second Open Government National Action Plan, the White House singled out PB as a promising practice in public participation, and has committed to work with key partners to increase awareness about PB and to support communities that are interested in launching PB processes.

PB has enjoyed a lot of success and recognition over the past few years, but the process has also faced some interesting challenges that those in our field should be aware of.  A recent article in the Hyde Park Herald tells the story of how one Chicago ward’s PB process ran into such challenges, and unfortunately was discontinued.

As a group committed to the growth of public engagement in meaningful decisions about our communities, we want to see PB and other public engagement processes continue to expand and thrive. But while it was disappointing news to hear, we believe Chicago’s 5th Ward provides a case study from which we can draw a few key lessons. One of the first challenges to the 5th Ward’s process is presented at the beginning of the article:

Hyde Parkers met Ald. Leslie Hairston’s decision not to continue the 5th Ward’s participatory budgeting (PB) program this year with a mixed reaction.

The 5th Ward’s experiment with PB — a political process born in Brazil in the late ’80s, in which constituents decide how their district’s money is spent — was the first on the South Side. A series of meetings took place beginning in 2012 and culminated with a public vote last May on how to spend $1 million of the 5th Ward’s discretionary funds.

Although Hairston said the program will be assessed next year, she said earlier this month that it was discontinued on the heels of a monthly ward meeting last October, where some participants described the process as cumbersome.

“They said it was very time consuming, a lot of meetings, and that they thought the neighborhood groups that they had were active enough to do it without having all of the expenses that were associated with it,” Hairston said.

We added the emphasis to the last sentence because this is an important idea for us to retain: like many engagement processes, PB is a lot of work for the sponsors, organizers, and citizens involved, and they can be more successful if they tap into already-existing community organizations to help get that work done.

Maybe it’s obvious to some of us, but PB needs buy-in from many parts of a given community, and a commitment to share the work load or the costs is one of the most genuine kinds of buy-in we can get.

The decisions about which existing community organizations to involve need to be made on a case-by-case basis, but in general, we should be looking to engage such groups as early as possible about actively contributing to a PB process, and even creating plans for outreach to these kinds of groups before we get started. Substantial participation from established groups will strengthen the process and signal its credibility to local residents.

The second insight we are taking away is similarly straightforward: low turnout can kill the PB process.

A news brief dated May 8, entitled “5th Ward Participatory Budgeting Process Wins High Marks,” framed voter turnout as historic despite the fact that just over 100 people voted… But last year’s process won’t be repeated this year, because of a low voter turnout and financial cost that led Hairston to question its effectiveness…

Hyde Parkers’ reactions to the program’s end ranged from understanding to disappointment — to both. “The turnout of approximately 100 was extremely disappointing,” said Roger Huff, a co-chair on the 5th Ward’s participatory budgeting leadership committee… “I don’t really blame Alderman Hairston for what she decided to do, because when it came time to vote, the community didn’t show up.”

Clearly, numbers matter in PB. In many public participation projects, turning out large numbers of people is important, and finding effective practices for doing that is a perennial issue in our field. But a key part of what we think is important here is that sustaining those numbers matters more.

Long-term community participation and buy-in is what makes PB work, and without a plan to cultivate and continue to engage a broad base of participants, the process can start to unravel. In addition to focusing on turnout from our communities, the 5th Ward’s case also highlights the fact that we may also need to pay attention to turnout in neighboring communities.

Chicago’s 5th Ward is not the only area of town where PB has caught on:

…the [5th] ward’s approximately 100 voters were dwarfed by more than 500 in the 46th Ward and around 1,400 in the 49th Ward, where PB was also available.

In some respects, this dynamic of the 5th Ward’s story suggests that it may be possible to become victims of our own success – if PB participants from one area of town see that the participation from their neighbors in other communities is dwarfing their own, it may impact the morale of the group and, ultimately, participation levels.

We aren’t pretending to know the solution to this issue, and maybe this wasn’t actually a factor in the 5th Ward’s situation. But it strikes us as a consideration that could end up bearing fruit if it is creatively accounted for. (If you have a creative suggestion on this front, please let us know in the comments section!) Another piece of the article brings us to one of our last takeaways from the 5th Ward’s experience: flexibility with the way money can be spent is key.

Although he applauds Hairston for her decision to open up the budgeting process to others, [Hyde Parker Alon Friedman] says certain changes could have been made — such as starting the process earlier — or using part of the $1.3 million in discretionary funding on related costs.

This is currently impossible, however, according to project coordinator [and NCDD member] Maria Hadden, of the New York City-based Participatory Budgeting Project, a nonprofit which has worked as a project lead for Chicago’s wards and similar processes nationwide.

She says Chicago wards’ discretionary funds can only be spent on fixed assets, not services. “The menu money is bond money, and it cannot be used for anything other than infrastructure,” Hadden said.

This kind of problem – older laws on the books undercutting newer attempts at public engagement – is hugely frustrating for our field in general, and it’s why NCDD supports the recommendations of the Making Public Participation Legal report around revising our legal statutes to remove barriers to effective public engagement processes. (Learn more about the report and our involvement here.)

It seems clear that the Chicago PB processes only being allowed to spend money on projects that are legally considered “infrastructure” limits the participants’ creativity and the possibilities for how PB money can be spent – something that can hurt morale and possibly thwart a community’s willingness to engage in such an involved process altogether. Altering the laws the govern such decisions may or may not be a simple thing to do, but as in many situations like this, it could unlock a lot of the potential for the kind of transformative change that real public engagement can bring.

The last thing we are taking away from this article – mentioned multiple times in the article – is advice that we all sometimes have trouble following: start early.

“We should reconsider and maybe try it again next year, much, much earlier,” he added, perhaps in the summer. “I think that if we do that we have a good chance to succeed and get many more people in voting for the projects.”

“The early bird gets the worm,” as they say, and though it’s an annoying cliche, it remains true: the more time we have to plan and generate buy-in, the more effective our engagement processes will be. Our project schedules are constantly pushed and pulled by funding limitations, busy schedules, and lots of variables we often can’t control, but as much as we can, we should always be trying to get working as early as possible.

So while it is disappointing to see the 5th Ward’s PB process discontinued, we think it is a good learning opportunity for the rest of us that could make our efforts stronger in the end. But we also remain optimistic that PB can make a comeback in the 5th Ward eventually, and that it could come back stronger than ever.

We wish everyone involved the best of luck, and we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Chicago’s public engagement processes as it continues to pioneer new practices and provide new lessons.

You can find and read the original Hyde Park Herald article here: www.hpherald.com/2014/01/15/low-turnout-blamed-for-participatory-budgeting-ending. Also see NCDD supporting member Janice Thomson‘s insightful blog post on how and why Occupy Roger’s Park members have protested PB in Chicago.

Art of Hosting: Beyond the Basics Retreat

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We are excited to tell you about the inaugural Art of Hosting: Beyond the Basics retreat – a great opportunity coming up this April 4th – 6th to deepen your skills as a convener. This amazing retreat will be hosted in Ohio first, but will also be replicated three more times in Canada and Mexico, so you have multiple chances to participate.

The Art of Hosting team describes the event as:

…a 3-day immersion into advanced Art of Hosting and facilitation practice. In this intensive retreat, we will be learning advanced process design, hearing stories of iterative long term strategic interventions, and exploring our own limits as leaders and cutting edge change theory.

The retreat is geared toward helping engagement practitioners gain and hone skills that will help them tackle long-term, large-scale projects:

Art of Hosting Beyond the Basics builds on the lessons of years of applying the Art of Hosting to large scale systemic change initiatives in healthcare, indigenous child and family services, food systems, faith communities, poverty, homelessness, urban planning, corporate change, public engagement, civic governance, entrepreneurship and many more.

We will touch on

  • Designing for large scale, multi-year, multi-stakeholder engagements
  • Iterative design for multiple connected events
  • Transformative engagement over large systems  and broad geography
  • Combining methodologies into cohesive, coherent and impactful designs

AoH: Beyond the Basics invites you to come and dive deep into those areas in your practice that are holding you back from working at scale, and to bring your real challenges of complexity and uncertainty to a collaborative lab where together we can crack new insights and design new ways forward…

This is a 3 day retreat for seasoned leaders and audacious change makers. The scope, complexity and scale of work we are being asked to engage with continues to grow. Now is the time to gather, take breath, and learn together.

Are you excited yet?  If you are ready to get involved, you can learn more at www.AoHBtB.com or find the registration page by clicking here.

The Art of Hosting is coordinated in part by NCDD supporting member Tuesday Ryan-Hart, and we appreciate her letting us know about this wonderful opportunity for other NCDDers to take their skills and practice to the next level. Good luck to all the participants!

 

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.