About GNH Community Voices
It's not as if blogs are new-fangled or anything, but this blog is still an experiment -- an experiment by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to find new ways to continue the dialogue started at our Community Voices: Issues and Impact forums, where we've had the great privilege of hosting terrific exchanges of ideas between various sectors of our community, including donors, nonprofit agencies, activists and most importantly, constituents and members of the community at large.
We aren't the first to notice that our community has stratified in many ways. Our overall goal in hosting these forums is to help those strata reconnect. It's funny in a sad way how hard it can be to get people to talk to each other. Too often, they talk past each other because one side's talking apples while the other's talking oranges.
Fortunately, we've been lucky at our forums. Our partner, Community Mediation, has done an excellent job in facilitating the discussions to create true dialogue, and of course, the people who have attended have genuinely wanted to engage in multi-way conversations.
We also hope that the dialogues will inspire participants to commit to making a difference. Perhaps some activists agree to coordinate their efforts, or a donor chooses to increase his/her contributions to a worthy cause (and recruit others to join in), or a group of nonprofits find that they should include constituents in their planning efforts, or all three constituencies band together to create a new initiative -- whatever the idea, the point is that one chooses to give of oneself -- one's time, expertise, or resources. And it doesn't have to be something dramatic. It can be as simple as just wanting to learn more.
This year's forums are focusing on issues important to youth. How they feel about specific issues, what are they doing about those issues, and how adults and "the system" -- really, all of us -- can work with them to resolve those issues.
Join us in the dialogue!
Angel Fernández-Chavero
for
The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven
www.cfgnh.org
We aren't the first to notice that our community has stratified in many ways. Our overall goal in hosting these forums is to help those strata reconnect. It's funny in a sad way how hard it can be to get people to talk to each other. Too often, they talk past each other because one side's talking apples while the other's talking oranges.
Fortunately, we've been lucky at our forums. Our partner, Community Mediation, has done an excellent job in facilitating the discussions to create true dialogue, and of course, the people who have attended have genuinely wanted to engage in multi-way conversations.
We also hope that the dialogues will inspire participants to commit to making a difference. Perhaps some activists agree to coordinate their efforts, or a donor chooses to increase his/her contributions to a worthy cause (and recruit others to join in), or a group of nonprofits find that they should include constituents in their planning efforts, or all three constituencies band together to create a new initiative -- whatever the idea, the point is that one chooses to give of oneself -- one's time, expertise, or resources. And it doesn't have to be something dramatic. It can be as simple as just wanting to learn more.
This year's forums are focusing on issues important to youth. How they feel about specific issues, what are they doing about those issues, and how adults and "the system" -- really, all of us -- can work with them to resolve those issues.
Join us in the dialogue!
Angel Fernández-Chavero
for
The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven
www.cfgnh.org
posted by The Community Foundation @ 4:25 PM
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