The A Spot

Hat tip to Michael Gilbert for alerting me to this 2007 report from the Health Communication Partnership called Taking Community Empowerment to Scale. I am currently working on a few pilot projects as part of our work in Ukraine under the Ukraine Citizen Action Network. Perfect timing to read this report as I am thinking about how to set these pilots up to easily scale if they prove useful and relevant to citizens in Ukraine. I was struck by the 14 recommendations…these are integral to how ISC does its programming and crucial when working to mainstream advocacy and citizen engagement into every day life.
(more…)

Last Tuesday was Town Meeting Day here in Vermont – a State holiday that allows voters in small and mid-sized towns to get together and debate the coming year. In my rural town, more than half of our 903 residents turned out to discuss the annual school budget, the purchase of a new fire truck, and how much support we should offer to a library in a neighboring town. Children colored and played in a near-by schoolroom, and in the middle of the meeting the town recessed to share a lunch of shepherd’s pie and jello salad.

The discussion was civil and orderly, governed by Robert’s ubiquitous Rules of Order. Everyone who wanted to have a say on a given issue, for or against, was given the chance to speak and make their case. The whole affair was eerily reminiscent of the Norman Rockwell painting Freedom of Speech, in which a weatherbeaten rural citizen — with more than a slight resemblance to Abraham Lincoln — rises to speak his mind at a public meeting, the rest of the crowd leaning in the better to hear him.

(more…)