DemocracySpace.org

Does your town have 'heart & soul'?

The Orton Family Foundation is inviting communities of fewer than 50,000 people in four New England states (New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts,
and Vermont) and four Rocky Mountain states (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming) to apply for grants of up to $100,000 to help fund planning initiatives that reflect the town's "heart and soul." Two communities from each region will be chosen.

From the Orton website:

The Orton Family Foundation helps citizens and leaders of small cities and towns identify and express their community’s heart and soul—those attributes citizens hold dear and that connect individuals to one another and to the community as a whole. When they are fully understood, these heart and soul attributes can be used to shape and drive decisions that protect and enhance local character and values even as change occurs.

According to a FAQ that accompanies the foundation's request for proposals, planning projects will include "an open, in-depth listening and visioning process characterized by broad, direct citizen engagement." Find out if your community fits the profile by reading the RFP here and the FAQ here. The application deadline is March 3, 2008.

Friday digest-open thread 12/07/07

Sorry to be so late in posting today. There's plenty to report, so let's get right to it:

Two communities with brand-new dialogue-to-action programs held action forums last night. Click here to read about the doings in Lynchburg, Virginia, where 120 people have been working on racism and racial equity issues. Then check out this story about last night's action forum in Lewiston, Maine, where local youth and their adult allies expressed an interest in building a youth center and getting a youth voice on the school board.

Citizens of Brattleboro, Vermont, held an action forum this week, too, to conclude a round of discussions on poverty. Here's a story that ran earlier this week, before the forum. Just a reminder: Poverty will be the focus of this month's DemocracySpace water cooler, set for 1 p.m. Eastern next Thursday, December 13. Join us online at that time to talk with other organizers who are working to move their communities from poverty to prosperity.

The Iowa Caucus - the kickoff event of the 2008 presidential primary season - is January 3. But today is National Caucus Day, an effort to get people to spend a little time together talking about the candidates and what we seek in our next chief exec. Click here to see if an event is happening near you.

Speaking of the presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Barack Obama gave a major speech on public service this week, saying he'd promote policies - including a vastly expanded AmeriCorps - to help Americans of all ages give back to their communities. The plan would also "invest in the capacity of nonprofits to innovate and expand successful programs across the country." Click here to read the plan in depth.

PublicDecisions.com, which specializes in training for public participation planners and elected officials, has announced a full slate of online classes for the first quarter of 2008. Selections include "Involving Youth in Decision Making," a tongue-in-cheek "Ten Reasons Not to Involve the Public in Your Decisions," and "Managing News Media in Public Involvement." Click here for the full schedule.

The international conference on climate change in Bali reached its halfway mark today, two days after the U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee passed a bill aimed at cutting global warming emissions by 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. The Bush administration remains opposed to mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and a House-passed energy bill stalled in the Senate today. But as Katharine Mieszkowski writes at Salon, the American public is now leading the way on the issue and it's looking more likely that the U.S. will be on board when the next treaties are written in 2009. Click here.

Not just more 'yada, yada'

One week from today, youth and adults in Lewiston, Maine, will launch an exploration into how to make Lewiston and nearby Auburn places where youth feel valued and comfortable living their lives. The first meeting of Youth+Adults+Dialogue=Action - or YADA - is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. for four Thursdays starting October 25. Organizers hope that about 100 people - youth ages 14 to 24 and adults - will take part. Lewiston Mayor Laurent F. Gilbert will lead next week's kickoff in the Lewiston City Council Chambers.

The word is getting out about YADA, and how youth have key roles in making the project happen. Local graffiti artist Brian Serfes was recruited to help promote the program (see a story and slide show of Seres at work here) and Joe Bosse, one of 27  facilitators trained for the program, has put up a MySpace page (shown above). With the song "Breathe In, Breathe Out" by Mat Kearney playing in the background, the page explains:

"In April 2006, several local agencies serving/working with teens and young adults convened a group of community members to help answer the question of how to make Lewiston/Auburn a more youth-friendly and youth-empowered place.  While some positive actions were initiated by the group, we realized that there were no youth sitting at the table.  After careful consideration, much research, and interaction with local youth, we decided to initiate a “study circles project.”

Study circles are large-scale dialogues that bring together diverse people in groups of about eight to ten people to talk and create positive change in their communities. It's important to bring everyone into the process, facilitator Deacon Lasagna - a local high schoool senior - told the local newspaper, the Sun Journal. "The kids who volunteer to do school program stuff, they don't tend to be the kinds that need the kind of programs we're thinking about," he said. Instead, the program is aimed at youth like Seres who don't always fit the mold of what society expects.

Larry Marcoux, director of community impact for the United Way and chairman of the YADA steering committee (and a former high school history teacher), says no one knows what actions the participants may wind up adopting at the action forum set December 6. "We don't want to front-load anything," he told the newspaper. "We want the 100 people involved in this to design everything that happens."