“It was encouraging hearing people with similar ideas and feelings—and those who might have thought of things you’d never thought of. It is just very much eye opening to listen and hear other people.”
“I looked forward to it and the time went so fast. I don’t feel that I was at a meeting or a class. I felt like I was at a party, where I have friends and we could talk about things that I was really interested in. …I just would love to continue doing this.”
“I found that what the discussions lead to was more inner awareness. We have the discussions, and then I go back and think about it. I found it really good for me, for my inner growth.”
“I was terrified the first time…[but] I became more comfortable speaking out than I would have ever anticipated… I feel that I grew … I feel much more like a grown-up now. I worked on one of my great fears and everyone made me feel very comfortable and I appreciate that.”
Of course another primary goal for exploratory discussion programs is the development of a generative range of policy ideas or possibilities—both in breadth and depth. Here too these participants’ discussions on the topic of “Welcoming Communities” were successful. Some of the different policy possibilities (or frameworks) and some of the key implementations within those frameworks include the following.
- Enabling Diversity & Inclusivity—re-imagining our communities as multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-generational, and multi-class. And adopting changes to both our physical and social/cultural environments to enable and nurture such diversity and inclusivity, including—
- More diverse housing options, integrating high, middle, and low-income housing; more and better public meeting spaces and other third spaces that strengthen community; and
- Written goals, policies, procedures, and outreach to address the legacies of exclusion
- Multi-cultural and multi-generational programs and services.
- Fostering Community Spirit—focusing on building and sustaining a shared sense of and commitment to—
- Neighborliness, public trust, engagement
- Diversity and inclusivity as shared values for the community; that make it stronger
- Community service – wide engagement, multiple options, services, roles, etc.
- Continuing opportunities for education, engagement, learning for all
- Community wide events and programming (arts, entertainment, shopping, etc.).
- Increasing Outreach—more and better coordination and interaction—
- Within a community: ambassadors and others to personally welcome and orient new members; personal invitations and introductions to others, to opportunities for service, services, and leadership roles.
- Across communities: communication, coordination, creation of joint programs (mentoring, assistance, education, entertainment), and celebrations (holidays and other cultural events).
- Leadership Committed to Inclusivity, including—
- Written commitments to diversity, inclusivity, and equity in mission statements, policies/rules, and marketing/publicity
- Long-term, strategic planning and budgeting that includes goals and funding for welcoming, diversity, and inclusion
- Cultivating the next generation of diverse leaders – invitations and mentoring
- Openness to change and to ongoing research, education and training in best practices for diversity and inclusion.
Next steps in this timely and ongoing project include incorporating these and other participant ideas into a couple different documents: 1) a report for this project’s partners at Leisure World that will include some ideas that are more specific to that community; and 2) an initial draft of a more general discussion guide that could be useful as a starting point for similar discussions in other communities interested in this topic.
You can find out more about this project, including the overall course outline and the weekly discussion summaries, on the Welcoming Communities project page.