Collaborative Action and Impact: 
Creating Community Impact through Partnerships and Public Engagement


Wednesday, December 3, 2014

11:00am to 5:00pm



UIC Student Center East 

750 S. Halsted Street

Illinois Room

Chicago, Illinois 60607


Join us on Wednesday, December 3rd from 11am - 5pm for the third annual convening of the Greater Chicago Dialogue and Deliberation Community of Practice. This year the event will report out on the findings of the recent study conducted on the community of practice and focus on how to use both partnerships and a variety of dialogue and deliberation methods to create impact in communities.

The event will include a panel of experts who will discuss the ways that they have used both partnerships and dialogue and deliberation methods in Chicago to create community change. The panel will be followed by a presentation by Thomas Lenz on how to use individual relational meetings for vibrant public and professional life. To build our community, we will then practice what we have been learning by mapping our network and networking with others in the community to begin forming our partnerships for collaborative impact.

A full description of the event is included below. To attend, please RSVP by December 1st to Kathryn James via email at kjames21@uic.edu. This event is free and open to the public. Lunch will be served.


Agenda

11:00am Registration, Lunch and Networking


12:00pm Welcome
Joseph Hoereth, Director
Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement


12:15pm Report on Findings from the Community of Practice Study
Matthew Sweeney, Visiting Research Associate
Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement


12:30pm Creating Community Impact through Partnerships and Public Engagement


Panelists: 
Cecile Carroll, Co-Director, Blocks Together

Adrian Esquivel, Economic Development Director, Enlace Chicago

Simone Alexander, Community Development Director, Enlace Chicago


Panelist will each spend 15 minutes describing the ways that they have used both partnerships and dialogue and deliberation methods in Chicago to create community change. Panelists will then engage with participants and respond in an interactive Q & A session.

Enlace Chicago is dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives of the residents of the Little Village Community by fostering a physically safe and healthy environment in which to live and by championing opportunities for educational advancement and economic development. Through their four program areas:  Community Education, Community & Economic Development, Organizing & Advocacy and Violence Prevention, Enlace Chicago directly serves more than 8,000 youth and adults annually.  The organization’s impact reaches well beyond this number and benefits our entire community of nearly 100,000 residents by creating opportunities and resources. They have served as the lead agency on the Little Village New Communities Program for over ten years and, in partnership with Alderman Munoz, launched their second cycle of participatory budgeting this fall. 

Blocks Together (BT) is a membership-based community organizing group in the West Humboldt Park (WHP) neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Since 1995, BT has empowered residents to work together for systematic changes that bring concrete improvement to their lives. They tackle social justice issues relating to education, housing, economic justice and the criminalization of youth. They frame their work through the lens of racial justice and human rights and emphasize ongoing political education and the connection of our campaigns to broader social justice movements. Blocks Together successfully won a new public library using tax increment financing (TIF) funds and lead the first PB process with $2 million in TIF money in West Humboldt Park.


2:00pm The Habit of Relating: Individual relational meetings for vibrant public and professional life

Speaker:
Thomas Lenz, Senior Associate, Great Cities Institute and
Senior Consultant, Millennia Consulting, LLC

Effective civic engagement depends on trust - between individuals and among institutions. Individual relational meetings, a building block of many community organizing strategies, are one way to create and strengthen the public relationships necessary for action. This workshop will introduce individual meetings and how participants can use them in their work.




3:30pm Mapping Café

The Core Group of the Greater Chicago Dialogue and Deliberation Community of Practice (CoP) will lead us in a collaborative network mapping exercise at our tables inspired by the World Cafe process and recently used at the NCDD conference. This activity will serve as a fun way to network with the amazing people in the room, and to begin to get a sense of the whole Greater Chicago area network, our existing connections, and potential new connections that can be made.




4:00pm Creating New Relationships through Speed Networking

Through speed networking, participants will be able to practice relational meetings and make new connections for future partnerships in a highly interactive and fun activity.




5:00pm Adjourn