Text from Steans Center

Most communities address social and economic problems with only a small amount of their total capacity. Much of the community capacity is not used and is needed! This is the challenge and opportunity of community engagement. Everyone in a community has something to offer. There is no one we don’t need.

• Everyone Has Gifts with rare exception; people can contribute and want to contribute. Gifts must be discovered.
• Relationships Build a Community see them, make them, and utilize them. An intentional effort to build and nourish relationships is the core of ABCD and of all community building.
• Citizens at the Center: It is essential to engage the wider community as actors (citizens) not just as recipients of services (clients).
• Leaders Involve Others as Active Members of the Community: Leaders from the wider community of voluntary associations, congregations, neighborhoods, and local business, can engage others from their sector. This “following” is based on trust, influence, and relationship.
• People Care About Something: Agencies and neighborhood groups often complain about apathy. Apathy is a sign of bad listening. People in communities are motivated to act. The challenge is to discover what their motivation is.
• Motivation to Act must be identified. People act on certain themes they feel strongly about, such as; concerns to address, dreams to realize, and personal talents to contribute. Every community is filled with invisible “motivation for action”. Listen for it.
• Listening Conversation: One-on-one dialogue or small group conversations are ways of discovering motivation and invite participation. Forms, surveys and asset maps can be useful to guide intentional listening and relationship building.
• Ask, Ask, Ask: Asking and inviting are key community-building actions. “Join us. We need you.” This is the song of community.
• Asking Questions Rather Than Giving Answers Invites Stronger Participation: People in communities are usually asked to follow outside expert’s answers for their community problems. A more powerful way to engage people is to invite communities to address
  ‘questions’ and finding their own answer– with agencies following up to help.
• A Citizen-Centered “Inside-Out” Organization is the Key to Community Engagement: A “citizen-centered” organization is one where local people control the organization and set the organization’s agenda.
• Institutions Have Reached Their Limits in Problem-Solving: All institutions such as government, non-profits, and businesses are stretched thin in their ability to solve community problems. They cannot be successful without engaging the rest of the community in solutions.
• Institutions as Servants: People are better than programs in engaging the wider community. Leaders in institutions have an essential role in community-building as they lead by “stepping back,” creating opportunities for citizenship, care, and real democracy.

Group Discussion Questions:

• In VIA, we say that our community partners are our co-educators. When have you learned from and/or been served by somebody you set out to serve?
• One of the five Vincentian virtues is humility. How do you see this at work when we enter into our service communities
• Looking at the Asset-Based Community Development principles, which guideline resonates with you and why? Do any of them challenge you?
• How will you prepare your VIA participants to enter into communities?

Part 1 – For the first part one person chooses to be the leader while the other one is the follower. The follower needs to be the exact mirror image of the leader. The leader can move in any way and the follower must follow them exactly. Allow participants to do this for about 5-8 minutes.

Reflection:

• How did it feel to be the leader? How did it feel to be the follower?

Part 2 – For the second part, ask participants to work together and collaborate in becoming each other’s mirror image. Any participant can decide to move and the other participants must reflect that movement. This exercise is different because both participants can determine the movement but must be open to the movement of their partner and follow that as well.

Reflection:

• Who was the leader? Who was following? How did this exercise feel different from the first exercise? Which one did you enjoy better? Was it easy to work together?
• How do you see this reflecting your experience as a VIA leader?
• How can this reflect how we choose to enter into communities?
• How does this reflect the importance of dialogue between communities? What are some problems with having one-way dialogue like we did in the first exercise? What are the difficulties of sharing equal leadership? This exercise was a way for us to begin to reflect on how we are entering spaces. How do we dialogue with others?

When you are serving a community, we want to avoid the feeling of the first exercise. We are not there to “save” anybody and lead a community “into the light”. We want to get closer to what the second exercise reflects. We want to listen to each other and have mutual respect for each other, hence in the exercise moving by being true to how we may want to move but also attentive to our partner’s movements and respecting their decisions by following them as well. We are going with open ears and open hearts which will allow us to give back to the community but also receive in return. We are going to learn from each other through the shared dialogue we will have in being with the community.

Begin by journaling and answering these questions:

1. What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, “for what do you not have words, yet?”]
2. What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]
3. “What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after.]
4. If we have been “socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition,” ask yourself: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” [So, answer this today. And every day.]

Adapted from “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” collected in The Cancer Journals.

Afterward: 

• Pair and share questionnaire; what did you write down and why?
• Doing this is being honest with ourselves and where we are at; looking at what we are facing right now; sharing these problems with someone else to maybe lessen the burden a little bit
• Invitations
  • What is hard about sharing our personal experiences with people? What is something easy?
  • What is a time you shared something and really felt like you were seen?
  • How can you continue/work on being honest with yourself and others?
• Recognizing the human dignity in others and the power of storytelling; we become closer to others and understand people more

Check-out: Share something you need to do and something you want to do this weekend

This is a practice exercise for facilitating peace circles. 

Storytelling has been used by many different communities to preserve local history and tradition, as well as a factor of community organizing. Talking to others and getting to know each other is an important part of the peacemaking/circle process. The process and action of storytelling helps us to understand one another, share
experiences, build relationships, etc. We’ll try to lean into this today while still getting in some more (tiny) facilitation practice!

In groups of 3-4 people each:

• Each person will invite their talking piece and why they are here (this will get repetitive, since everyone is from the same program, but good practice to start thinking of how you will introduce yourself to your classroom!), (use the intros from the binders)
• Remember, we’re not actually doing these invitations, but practicing introducing them with enough context/good transitions, etc.

Back in large group reflection:

• What is the role of storytelling in the process of building relationships and community?
• What do you feel comfortable about in facilitation?
• We’ve been in community with each other today and thinking about how storytelling is vital to the process of building community, so to honor the other communities you are all parts of, we’d would like to invite you to think of a specific community you find yourself being a part of and write down a commitment you’d like to make to that
  community.

By Aisha Sherazi

Communication breakdown
What’s happening today?
We don’t say what we mean,
And we don’t mean what we say.

We trundle along in life,
Not speaking when we should,
We wait until it’s too late,
And then say nothing good.

We don’t look at each other,
Nor smile as much these days,
We are all so busy,
Being busy is the craze.
But what is so important?
That we don’t really talk?
Why don’t we make time?
Instead of running, we could walk.

We use our text messages,
Our computers, to speak for us,
We use our telephones,
And rely on our trust.
It’s hard to know what’s behind talk,
If you’re not face to face,
It’s hard to get a clear message,
Isn’t it a disgrace?

That we don’t meet each other,
And look eye to eye?
That we don’t take the time,
And understand why.

Why it is so important?
We connect and really speak,
Why it is essential,
We truly listen and not freak?

When someone suggests something,
That’s so far from our minds,
World peace depends on these things,
So let’s not be so behind.

We’ve got to make an effort,
And truly realize,
This isn’t really connecting,
It isn’t civilized.

Aisha Sherazi is a Muslim poet and has written many thought-provoking poems on a variety of topics such as gender issues, global warming, and terrorism. She is also known for her stand on humanitarian concerns and is a social activist. 

Reflection Questions:

• Do any of these stanzas resonate with you?
• With whom is it easy/difficult to communicate? Why?
• What communication skills do you see that you have?
• How would you like to grow in communication?

This space will be focusing on how we love ourselves and how we extend that love to others. Today we want to take a step back to allow ourselves to practice self-love and care. We will be extending that same care and thoughtfulness to ourselves with some love letters!

Write a letter to yourself from the future.

• What do you have an abundance of?
• What decisions do you have to make in the future that aren’t rooted in oppression but in communal pleasure?
• What are the words you need today for tomorrow?
• What is it that you love?
• Who is it that you love?
• What do you want to thank your past self (aka you right now) for?