Civic Sustainability
Library at Warren Alvarado Oslo School
1:30 pm Breakout Session
Facilitators: Linda Kingery (UM Northwest Regional Sustainable Development
Partnership) and Deb Zak (UM Extension Northwest Region)
World Café: PAR Projects
Purpose: Use facilitation methods that engage all of the participants to share their
knowledge
Appreciative Inquiry: Where is home? How would you describe your home?
World Café: Guidelines on table. 20 minutes – record thoughts and ideas, one person
stays and the rest leave – one “table host”. Own your conversations.
Discussion questions on table.
Brain Gain: 18-30 year-olds leave but then they come back, in their 30s and 40s after
educations, work experience.
 What type of school systems do they want?
 They are choosing to come back to ND and MN.
 1 out of every 34 people need to serve in a leadership position in order to survive
 Extension looks at how can we grow our leaders
1) How can we invite leadership across generations?
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Modeling-raise children in a way, model appropriate behavior
New generation doesn’t feel like they are included because of “old” leaders
Older leaders are the barriers, how change is exemplified, you don’t have to be
there the longest to know the most
Leadership can be lateral instead of hierarchical
Historically-underrepresented people are emerging as strong leaders
Differences across many leaders-accept that it will be difficult, nobody wants to
share power-but when you have to recognize there are others with expertise, you
will have to impart that power, knowledge etc.
Take a risk, be open-letting other generations in
What about NO box, can’t have no boundaries
Have common ground-find core elements
How do I know what I know? Where did it come from? Who does it benefit?
We don’t have answers-only questions
Connect without screens, learn by doing
Common philosophies
2) How might your community strengthen its identity while focusing on inclusivity?
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If you have a good idea of who is your community
Communities are a series of smaller communities
Means more than sharing a meal-should include every aspect of our community as
equity and equality
Platinum rule – treat me the way I want to be treated
Handle things in a way everyone can get what they need
Inclusive of all identities whether they hurt or not, going to be necessary
3) What makes your community special? How does that attract others to the community?
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Energy-efficiency initiatives
Positive-energy attracts others
Arts in Bemidji, retail shops
Resident Artist: Don’t allow crisis be the thing that brings us together.
Race is a folk concept, as humans we are 99.9% the same, we create subaltern groups that
don’t exist-folk concepts
“Nature College”-Jim Farrell