Six Steps to Make It Your Own

Making Every Voice Count

When everyone is included in public life, everyone benefits. Organizing "citizen-centered" efforts to solve community problems takes hard work and vision, but you can do it! Be organized. Take the time to build a solid foundation and you'll increase your chances for success.

Here are some steps you can take to help your community create opportunities for public conversations (dialogue) where all kinds of people can build trust, explore issues, and work together to find solutions and create change.

1. Get Started

Hold an informal meeting with a small group of people who share a concern about a community issue. Include people who come from diverse backgrounds and who represent different views about the issue.

Make sure the issue has broad appeal. Invite everyone to talk about how this issue affects them and others in the community. Consider questions like: What has already been done to address the issue? How might public conversations help our community resolve the issue? Who would participate? What do we hope would change?

Think about how to structure the conversation -- large or small-group meetings. How can we make sure that all voices and viewpoints get a fair hearing? How will we reach out to all parts of the community?

2. Build a Team

Assemble a diverse group of people who have the will, the skills, and the resources to organize public conversations that include a wide cross section of your community. Also, make sure you have buy-in from key stakeholders who can be helpful in moving your process along.

Develop a plan. Set goals for the program: "We are organizing public conversations to...." Imagine what could happen as a result of the conversations. What is possible and practical? What barriers will you face? Brainstorm a list of community resources and see how they might help support your program goals.

Create a community map, including the resources you've identified. Gather information and learn more about the issue and its impact on your community.

Analyze the issue. Who is most affected? How can you make the biggest impact? Who else should be involved and how can you reach them?

Start planning for action. Who will guide the action phase of the program? Who will lead the action teams? Who will provide administrative support? Who will "tell the story" to the larger community? What resources do you need?

3. Share the Work

Decide how your organizing team will work. How often will you meet? How will you make decisions? Who will provide leadership and run meetings? How will you communicate with one another? Will this be a volunteer effort, or will you need a paid coordinator and staff? Will you need to raise money, or will donations (cash, materials or space) cover your costs?

Set up work groups to carry out the organizing tasks. You'll need a coordinator to oversee committees to get the word out; raise funds; recruit the public; recruit and train meeting facilitators; handle meeting logistics; plan for and support action; and document and evaluate your efforts.

4. Hold Public Meetings

Full speed ahead for the organizing team, coordinator, and committees. During the month before the conversations begin, your committees will be hard at work. Everyone (organizing team, staff, and volunteers) will be involved in recruiting to ensure that participants represent all parts of the community.

5. Implementing and Supporting Action

Follow-up and moving forward. Decide how to help new action groups get started. Match community resources with action ideas. Link new action ideas to existing programs. Set up a system for keeping track of outcomes and changes that happen as a result of the public conversations. And keep "telling the story" to the broader community.

6. Plan for the Future

How did it go? Plan a meeting to discuss your work. Talk about current activity. What went well? What wasn't successful? How could you improve?

Things to think about for the long term. What would it take to make these types of initiatives (citizen-centered) part of the way your community works? How can you measure progress?

Explore the possibilities -- and celebrate your successes!

The Study Circles Resource Center is a national organization that helps local communities develop their own ability to organize large-scale, diverse dialogue that is structured to support and strengthen measurable community change. Created in 1989 by The Paul J. Aicher Foundation, SCRC has worked with more than 400 communities nationwide on many different public issues. For more information, please visit www.studycircles.org.

Learn more from Study Circles about creating community conversations that lead to change.