Learn a new method for dialogue and deliberation – the Summer Learning Springboard is an opportunity to learn new approaches you might not be familiar with! This year's program includes several sessions which highlight practices that may be new to you. Check them out below and be sure to register to join us. Learning the Empathy Circle Practice
Monday July 25 and repeat session Saturday July 30 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific Host: Edwin Rutsch, Center for Building a Culture of Empathy Participants will learn about the process of an Empathy Circle by experiencing it. An Empathy Circle is a structured dialogue process that effectively supports meaningful and constructive dialogue. The practice increases mutual understanding and connection by ensuring that each person feels fully heard to their satisfaction. Helping Communities Share Nothing But "Good News" Tuesday July 26 1:00-2:00 PM Eastern/10:00-11:00 AM Pacific Host: Eric Pories, Focus Intent Facilitation Services Learn how volunteers in West Virginia are bringing "Good News" to their community. At a Good News community engagement event, up to twenty speakers take turns sharing positive community news. Each speaker has a maximum of two minutes to share their “Good News” within a well-orchestrated agenda. Creating a Sense of Belonging Friday July 29 12:00-2:00 PM Eastern/9:00-11:00 AM Pacific Hosts: Mavis Tsai, Ph.D., Awareness, Courage & Love Global Project; U. of Washington & Susan Partnow, MA, Sr. Certified Facilitator, Compassionate Listening Feeling that we belong to a larger group that shares common struggles and aspirations is fundamental to our sense of happiness and well-being. Conversely—isolation, loneliness and feeling excluded undermines well-being. In this session, you will: 1) engage in a mindfulness exercise that explores how belonging starts with allowing in parts of yourself that are difficult for you to accept; 2) explore your experiences of inclusion and exclusion; 3) practice how to more deeply be with your own and another's heart. Convening and Facilitating Deliberative Discussions: How Can We Encourage and Safeguard Voting? Monday July 25 3:00-4:30 PM Eastern/12:00-1:30 PM Pacific Host: Betty Knighton, National Issues Forums & Kettering Foundation In this session, participants will explore the fundamental concepts and practices of deliberative dialogue within the context of convening and facilitating community and campus discussions on the critically important and timely issue of encouraging and safeguarding voting. Participants will receive a wide range of issue-specific and general materials to help them in their future efforts.
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20 years ago this month, NCDD was founded in response to a clear need for an infrastructure for learning and collaboration among those who approach D&D from a variety of disciplines, including public policy, social work, communication, education, social justice, social activism, and organizational development. Without you, our journey would never have been possible. Thank you for nurturing us and helping us grow into a network of innovators who bring people together across divides to discuss, decide, and take action together effectively on today’s toughest issues. We continue to exist to support the growing “dialogue and deliberation community” — a broadly-defined diverse community of practice who engage and mobilize people to come together and strengthen understanding of each other and issues in ways that supports community-building and collaborative problem-solving. Our dialogue and deliberation practices have matured over those 20 years. We look forward to building upon those foundations. As part of this effort the NCDD board of directors has taken time to refine NCDD’s mission and values to recommit ourselves to our purpose: NCDD is thrilled to be involved in the April Promising Practices webinar from the National Civic League! Next Tuesday, April 26th at 2:00pm Eastern/11:00am Pacific, NCDD's Executive Director Courtney Breese will join Samantha Oakley from the American Library Association and Kellee Forkenbrock from North Liberty Library to speak about the Libraries Transforming Communities initiative and NCDD's support of these efforts. The webinar will also talk about the work libraries are doing to serve as centers for dialogue and engagement. Check out the webinar description and speak bios below. And don't forget to register at this link to join us! Webinar Description: Libraries are far more than repositories for books, often serving as hubs for community life and civic engagement. As one of the last remaining accessible public spaces, libraries serve as centers of education and literacy, academic and professional development, engagement and dialogue. During this webinar, attendees will learn about the American Library Association’s initiative, “Libraries Transforming Communities," which has provided libraries opportunities to learn the skills of facilitating community conversations with help from the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. We will then hear how two libraries are engaging their communities and centering public discourse. Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC) — an initiative of the American Library Association — seeks to strengthen libraries’ role as core community leaders and change-agents. The initiative addresses a critical need within the library field by developing and distributing new tools, resources and support for librarians to engage with their communities in new ways. North Liberty Library in Iowa – Lighthouse in the Library is a conversation series giving North Liberty residents an opportunity to speak on important community issues in a town-hall style setting. Speakers Courtney Breese, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) As the executive director of NCDD, Breese leads a network of 700 individuals and organizations who bring people together across divides to discuss, decide, and take action together effectively on today’s toughest issues. She directs ongoing programs including NCDD’s work with the ALA. Breese is also an experienced mediation and public engagement practitioner. She has a passion for helping people make connections, communicate more effectively, and make decisions collaboratively. She enjoys examining systems and structures and working to improve society on a macro level. Kellee Forkenbrock, Public Services Librarian, North Liberty Library After two decades of work in the private sector, Kellee Forkenbrock joined North Liberty Library in June 2019 as a library assistant. She was promoted to her current role as Public Services Librarian in October of the same year, serving as the community engagement liaison for the library and assisting with the management of the library’s part-time staff. Kellee holds a Bachelor’s in Marketing and is pursuing a Masters in LIS from the University of Iowa. Her professional background includes a decade of project management with a skills assessment firm and seven years in multimedia advertising for a Gannett newspaper. Kellee is active in her community as a board member, having served for the Iowa City Public Library and Girls on the Run of Eastern Iowa. Read more about Kellee on her LinkedIn profile. Samantha Oakley, Project Director, American Library Association Samantha Oakley is an experienced project director with a demonstrated history of working in the library field. She is a project director with the American Library Association’s Public Programs Office; in this position she directs the following efforts: Libraries Transforming Communities, Let's Talk About It: Women's Suffrage, Media Literacy Education in Libraries for Adult Audiences, Community Connect, ALA PPO's annual grant opportunities, online learning, evaluation, and partnership inquiries. She has a BA in English from Western Illinois University, an MA in Gender Studies from Minnesota State University – Mankato, and a Master of Library & Information Science (MLIS) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. NCDD is happy to announce that we've extended the deadline for session proposals for the 2022 Summer Learning Springboard! To give folks a little more time to finalize their session details, we will now be accepting proposals through Friday, April 8th.
Go to https://forms.gle/BFvez3YCRtXBPRBaA to review the questions and criteria and submit your proposal. If you have any questions about proposing a session, email courtney@ncdd.org. Our second annual Springboard event will take place July 25-29, 2022. Join us this summer for a variety of skill building and learning exchange events. Last year, more than 125 attendees from across the globe joined us for thirteen engaging sessions, including workshops on Bohm Dialogue, Ripple Effects Mapping, and sessions discussing equity, neutrality, and using technology for engagement. You can check out the 2021 offerings on our Springboard page. As a reminder, NCDD Members will receive discounted registration rates for most or all sessions, so now is a good time to join or renew your membership! We look forward to seeing you this summer! NCDD is excited to announce our continued partnership with the American Library Association to support library workers through the Libraries Transforming Communities project. This latest effort will provide small and rural libraries with grants to facilitate community conversations which will identify services or facility improvements the library can take on to better address accessibility needs in their communities.
NCDD will support grantees by providing materials and guidance for facilitating accessible community conversations. Over the next three years of this initiative, NCDD will provide coaching to libraries and support to the project. NCDD will be reaching out to our network to help support this effort with co-creation of facilitation materials which identify best practices and models for accessible conversations. Starting this November, ALA will begin accepting applications for the grants, which will be distributed in several rounds over the next three years. Grants will range from $10,000 to $20,000. Libraries will identify the audience they are hoping to reach (e.g., homebound seniors, children with autism, Deaf community members) and facilitate a community conversation with the impacted populations. Grantees will then use the funds to create services or improve their facilities based on the needs identified by their audience. Please share this opportunity with your local library! Have you designed and/or facilitated accessible conversations? Let NCDD know about it! Email courtney@ncdd.org to share your experience and explore whether you might be able to help support the libraries in this next endeavor. This initiative is funded through a private grant to ALA. Review the recent ALA press release here. The NCDD Summer Learning Springboard is back! Save the date for our second annual virtual event, taking place July 25-29, 2022. Join us this summer for a variety of skill building and learning exchange events.
Last year, more than 125 attendees from across the globe joined us for thirteen engaging sessions, including workshops on Bohm Dialogue, Ripple Effects Mapping, and sessions discussing equity, neutrality, and using technology for engagement. You can check out the 2021 offerings on our Springboard page. Call for Session Proposals Now Open: Are you interested in leading a session at the 2022 Springboard? Now is the time to submit your session proposal! Go to https://forms.gle/BFvez3YCRtXBPRBaA to review the questions and criteria and submit your proposal. Deadline for submissions is Friday, April 8th. If you have any questions about proposing a session, email courtney@ncdd.org. As a reminder, NCDD Members will receive discounted registration rates for most or all sessions, so now is a good time to join or renew your membership! We look forward to seeing you in July! As we enter the last weeks of 2021, the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation is reaching out to our wonderful network of members and contacts to launch our annual end of the year fundraiser. We hope to boost our resources going into 2022, which marks NCDD’s 20th year! To start the coalition’s year off strong, we have set a goal of raising $15,000 and increasing our current ranks by an additional 150 members before the end of December. We are committed to better conversations, collaboration, and decision-making. Join our vibrant community as we explore these practices, share stories and resources, and continue to demonstrate the valuable work of dialogue and deliberation.
As NCDD enters its 20th year, we have much to reflect on and look forward to in 2022. Your support helps us:
We invite you to support the efforts of this vibrant community of practice with a donation today and to join us in this journey in 2022 by renewing or officially joining as a member. Come help us shape the future together! First of all, thank you to everyone in this community for sticking with the work in a tough year.
NCDD’s staff and board have been talking a lot over the last nine months of the pandemic about what this year has shown us about this network’s necessity in the world, and where we can most support you all. It’s been encouraging to see that much of what we’ve always offered – news and resources, and opportunities to connect and collaborate – are still highly valued and needed, especially when times are tough. There are also some areas we can work on – expanding our network, for one, in an inclusive way to welcome everyone who is committed to helping their communities have better conversations. It doesn’t matter whether you are a professional doing this work as your career, or a volunteer doing this to better your own community – all are welcome at NCDD. We are thrilled to share the following piece written by Lydia Hooper on the powerful way that graphic recordings can both capture a conversation in real time, and as folks saw first hand at NCDD2018, can be a motivator of conversation as well. We were fortunate to work with Lydia during the 8th National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in Downtown Denver this last November (view her work here!) and she helped create and facilitate an interactive graphic recording project over the course of the three days. She describes it more in the post below… By Lydia Hooper How many conversations have you had this week about something you saw, on TV or happening in front if you? Vision is the primary way we sense and experience our world, and we are social beings who process information with others. We can easily leverage these tendencies if we want to inspire specific conversations in specific moments. The conventional way of doing so is using presentation slides or videos to introduce or explain important topics. These visual forms, however, emphasize what is important from the perspective of the presenter. They do not necessarily offer opportunities to capture what a larger group of people thinks or feels. NCDD is excited to announce that we will be co-presenting a session at the Public Library Association Conference in Philadelphia, PA on Friday, March 23rd at 2:00pm. Along with our partners at the American Library Association Public Program’s Office, NCDD will be talking with public librarians about the Libraries Transforming Communities: Models for Change initiative and will help them further explore how libraries can engage their communities through dialogue and deliberation. The session is open to all attendees. The description for the session, titled Libraries Transforming Communities: Models for Change is below: |
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