On March 7, I had the honor of working with the Chicago’s Donors Forum and its partners to facilitate a convening on the power of community engagement.  The event was a kick-off for a continuing conversation about the foundation and non-profit sector in the Chicago metropolitan area, also known as Chicagoland. The conversation focused on the opportunities and challenges for utilizing community engagement to achieve organizational missions and build greater social capital in Chicago communities.

I co-facilitated the meeting with Diana Hess, Senior VP of the Spencer Foundation.  She is on leave from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is a professor of Curriculum and Instruction.  Her first book, Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion, won the National Council for the Social Studies Exemplary Research Award in 2009.

Diana and I got the meeting going with some keypad polling and a quick table discussion about the wide range of definitions that exist for “community engagement.”  Recognizing the broad scope of community engagement and the different perspectives people bring to the topic was important for building the foundation of the discussion.

Peter Levine, Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University (and a member of the AmericaSpeaks Board of Directors) provided valuable remarks based on research he has conducted which links increased community engagement to other indicators of community health, specifically, lower unemployment rates.

We were then treated to three local stories about community engagement:

• Agustin Flores, a thoughtful and well-poised young man, spoke about his political action experience with the support of the Mikva Challenge, and his plans to one day become the Mayor of Chicago.
• A video highlighted Sweet Beginnings, a workforce development program of the North Lawndale Employment Network that does more than create transitional job opportunities; they produce a successful line of all natural raw honey and honey-infused body care products.
• Choua Vue, Assistant Director of Community Engagement at Illinois Action for Children, talked about his organization’s work building connections and community between childcare teachers and other providers.

Participants then had the opportunity for deeper discussion at their tables about the community engagement that their organizations were already participating in, and the opportunities they see for greater community engagement in the future.  The Donors Forum staff captured ideas from all of the table discussions for closer review.

Bruce Sievers provided some of the closing remarks.  He worked for more than 35 years in philanthropic organizations and is now a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University.  He summarized many of the ideas in the convening around how we might respond to the decline in community engagement in four key categories: understanding the constituents, giving people a voice, changing policy, and building civil society.

Finally, check out this great graphic facilitation recording of the event produced by Brandy Agerbeck of Loosetooth and some live tweeting from the event.

Thanks to the Donors Forum, its sponsors, members and partners for organizing an important convening.  Good luck to all of them as they continue this discussion and their great work.  Visit here for more info about the sponsors, the planning committee, etc.

For photos of the event, please visit the Donors Forum Flickr or Facebook page.