With government and communities being our forté, Community Relations are critical to everything we do and everything that we teach facilitators. In the blog posts below you will find our keen observations on the basic understanding (or lack thereof) of how big societal decisions are made and how governance is supposed to function. It used to be called "civics" and it's all about working with the public. Here you can find the ins, outs, do's and don'ts. Happy reading!
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and my friends and I had to ride our chickens to school (couldn’t afford horses), we were taught a quaint subject called “civics” and/or “government.” That gradually came to an end as school curricula changed and narrowed. And that lack of basic understanding of ...
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Regardless of the purpose or size of any meeting that you’re managing, there are a few things that need to happen right away – like now. First, people have to feel comfortable and welcome and you need to make sure that happens. Second, people need to know why they’re there; ...
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A common pushback we hear against doing effective public participation is that it just takes too long. Organizations hate the idea of letting the public, especially their critics, slow their plans and the process down. If people would just leave us alone, things would go so much better and when ...
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Democracy is the genesis of public participation – power held by the people. In 1787, when the Founding Fathers had hammered out the U.S. Constitution in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin told an inquiring woman what the gathering had produced, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” A ...
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