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Civic Reflection News Update — April 2009In This IssueRead how the practice of civic reflection is being used in… Volunteer and Service Organizations, for member and staff development; AnnouncementsRegistration Deadline for Chicago Facilitation Workshop is May 1 The Project on Civic Reflection will hold its next facilitation training workshop on Thursday, May 28 and Friday, May 29, 2009, at The Menomonee Club in Chicago. Participants will receive hands-on facilitation skills taught by expert trainers, a facilitation handbook with tips and answers to frequently asked questions, a copy of The Civically Engaged Reader, and program consultation and ongoing support. Download our registration form and an informational flyer here. Registration closes on May 1, so register soon! We hope to see you there. Professional Development Credit for Illinois Teachers We are pleased to announce that the Project on Civic Reflection has been approved by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) to provide professional development training for Illinois teachers. Beginning in May, our Chicago facilitation training workshops will offer one Continuing Professional Development Unit (CPDU) for each hour of training to participating Illinois teachers. For more information, please contact us. Become a Fan of the Project on Facebook! The Project on Civic Reflection is now on Facebook. Visit our page to get the latest news on our trainings, publications, and other activities, and to connect with others doing civic reflection. We hope to see you there! News & NotesVOLUNTEER AND SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS Volunteer Florida Civic Reflection Initiative Volunteer Florida, Florida's state service commission, held a civic reflection training workshop in Orlando on March 10-11 to launch its new civic reflection initiative, Civic Sense. The initiative is designed to promote civic dialogue across the state and explore themes around AmeriCorps members' service experiences and community work. The training, led by Adam Davis and Ericka Zdenek, was immediately followed by an AmeriCorps Program Director's Meeting, where Ericka conducted an informational workshop and discussion of Anna Akhmatova's poem "If All Who Have Begged Help" for about 20 Program Directors. The newly trained Civic Sense Facilitators brought their enthusiasm to this meeting, encouraging Program Directors in their areas to plan a conversation. Ericka called the response "overwhelmingly positive," reporting that "many immediately saw the benefits of civic reflection to strengthening their member experience and program activities." Quarterly discussion reports and a Civic Sense evaluation form will be used to track the initiative's impact. National Service Learning Conference The 20th Annual National Service Learning Conference, this year on the theme "Growing Hope, Cultivating Change," was held at the Nashville Convention Center on March 18-21. The conference was co-convened by the National Youth Leadership Council and Volunteer Tennessee. Each year the conference draws about 2,700 participants from across the U.S. and 20 other countries. Project on Civic Reflection associate Adam Davis led a Saturday session titled "Is My Service Changing the World or Keeping It from Changing?" Participants in the session came from Montana, Oregon, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Illinois, the Republic of Congo, and elsewhere.
25th Annual IMPACT Conference The 2009 IMPACT Conference (the National Student Conference on Service, Advocacy, & Social Action) convened at the University of Maryland campus near Washington, D.C., on March 6-8. Over 600 college and university students, staff, year of service members, and nonprofit professionals from across the country gathered at the 25th annual conference to tell their stories and share resources and inspiration. Project on Civic Reflection trainer Michelle Barber hosted a 90-minute workshop, "Civic Reflection: Discussion at the Heart of Community," which used Bertolt Brecht's poem "A Bed for the Night" to engage participants in a discussion of charity, service, and their relationship to social change. On the following day Michelle co-hosted a three-hour forum, "Reflecting on Global Civic Engagement and Your Role in the Movement for Change," with Janeen Heath and Ann Peters of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The first half of the forum, beginning with a discussion of Henri Barbusse's story "The Eleventh," focused on how reflection and discussion can make service work more effective, sustainable and enjoyable. In the second half, the Pulitzer Center helped the group explore media coverage of such important issues as civil and overseas war, deforestation, water rights, sharing tools for finding and publishing more in-depth, critically reflective information. Michelle said of her experience at the conference, "Overall, the whole weekend was very engaging and refreshing. This was a gathering of students, professionals and activists who are actively working to improve their communities, organizations, campuses, and government. There was a tangible sense of yearning for information, tools, and support the whole weekend. Representing the Project on Civic Reflection gave me the opportunity to present tools for reflection, space for dialogue, and opportunities to form community." HIGHER EDUCATION Students in Course on Giving Put Philanthropy into Practice Students in "Traditions of Giving and Serving in American Life," an upper-level English course at Valparaiso University taught by Assistant Professor Martin Buinicki, put the subject matter of the course into practice this winter when they selected three local nonprofit organizations to receive donations of $250-$500 on behalf of the class. Students studied community needs and discussed how to expend the funds to make the biggest difference for good. The project, made possible by a special grant from the Project on Civic Reflection, included a detailed survey of student attitudes toward giving and service, distributed before and after they completed the course. The survey showed that the course had a significant impact not only on students' attitudes toward giving and service, but on the likelihood that they would participate in charitable or service activities.
Civic Reflection Webinar for Alabama Leaders Elizabeth Lynn recently presented a webinar on civic reflection to a diverse group of Alabama civic and educational leaders. The webinar was sponsored by the Caroline Marshall Draughton Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University. NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS Report on Nonprofit Leadership Series The Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida recently submitted its closing report on the "Uplifting (Nonprofit) Leadership IV" civic reflection series to the Florida Humanities Council. "Uplifting (Nonprofit) Leadership," which meets in Jacksonville, is a long-standing discussion series for nonprofit leaders in the region. This year the program focused on the "next generation" of nonprofit leaders, recruiting twenty-two young nonprofit professionals. Evaluations of the program were extremely positive, with participants giving the sessions an overall average ranking of 4.5 on a scale of one to five. According to its overview of the Uplifting (Nonprofit) Leadership program, over the past five years the Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida has found civic reflection to be "a powerful mechanism for uplifting the important work of nonprofit leaders, strengthening relationships among those leaders, and deepening individual and shared understanding of the nonprofit sector in a democratic society." MUSEUMS Museum Association Conference Civic Reflection was on the agenda at the Museum Association of New York (MANY) Annual Conference, held March 29-31 in Tarrytown, NY. Project on Civic Reflection director Elizabeth Lynn gave a capstone plenary session, sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities, on the concept of civic engagement and the need for reflection on civic life. Her presentation was followed by a model discussion of literary reflection as an approach to civic reflection. About 80 museum directors from around New York State discussed Pablo Neruda's story "The Lamb and the Pinecone" in small groups, then reconvened for a wide-ranging conversation about giving and vocation. MANY director Ann Ackerson called the session "a terrific way to help the conferees weave together many of the strands of conversation they engaged in over the course of the conference." Museum on Main Street Representing the Illinois Humanities Council, Adam Davis and Ryan Lewis led a civic reflection session at the Museum on Main Street National Planning Meeting for the 2009 New Harmonies and Journey Stories exhibitions. The session, which focused on civic reflection as a best practice during the planning stage of an exhibition, drew representatives from humanities councils in North Carolina, Utah, Washington and several other states. Participants talked about significant private journeys, or internal walks (using Edward Field's "A Journey"); external journeys, or public walks (using Langston Hughes' "Theme for English B"); and what harmonious interaction between the two might look like. Museum on Main Street, a partnership between the Smithsonian Institution and the Federation of State Humanities Councils, is a unique cultural project that brings Smithsonian exhibitions on national history to small rural museums across the United States. LIBRARIES ALA Discussion Guides The American Library Association website provides an extensive list of links to free online Discussion Guides for a variety of community programs, including civic discussions, the ALA's "Let's Talk About It" program, One City, One Book programs, and reading groups. Included are ALA discussion guides for many individual titles. SpotlightCivic Reflection Program Planned in Peru A civic reflection program will begin this summer in Lima, Peru, with volunteers of The Light and Leadership Initiative (LLI), a nonprofit dedicated to helping Peruvian women out of poverty through educational programs. Founder and executive director Lara DeVries first traveled to Lima in 2007, during her senior year of college, and spent four months there as a volunteer with Cross-Cultural Solutions. She met women from the area, including LLI board member Luz Ccasihue, who invited Lara to her home and talked with her about community needs. Lara and Luz decided they wanted to do something long-term to help the women and children of Huaycan, the area where Luz lives. Huaycan is a vast shantytown on the outskirts of Lima in the Ate-Vitarte district. Women in Huaycan work from dawn to dusk and tend to have little, if any, formal education. Children often drop out of school to work, repeating the cycle of poverty that trapped their parents. Lara explains, "There are food programs for immediate relief, but we wanted to do something long term to help the women and children in the district out of poverty." She and Luz decided that they could best achieve their goal by offering the residents of Huaycan educational opportunities, including classes in literacy, the English language, health and hygiene, career counseling, and community leadership. Since last year Lara has been raising funds and recruiting volunteers. She will return to Huaycan in mid-May, and in early June the first group of volunteers will join her. Amid all the pressing needs she is confronted with, Lara sees an important place for civic reflection. She was introduced to civic reflection in the fall of 2008, when she participated in a facilitation training workshop led by Adam Davis at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. She immediately felt that civic reflection would be "a perfect fit for both our volunteers and program participants." Lara will begin a pilot civic reflection program with the volunteers in mid-June, using texts in English. Later she plans to extend the discussions to program participants as well, using Spanish texts. We wish Lara, Luz, and the other LLI staff and volunteers good fortune in Huaycan and look forward to hearing how their work develops.
New on Our WebsiteUpdated Sample Materials We recently updated our Sample Materials page with new reading lists and discussion plans, reorganized by audience. Please contact us if you would like to share the readings, themes and questions used with your group! New in the Resource Library Below are recently added civic reflection readings on leading, giving, and associating, along with a few questions they raise. Leading
Giving "Once More to the Lake" by E.B. White
Associating "Old Men Playing Basketball" by B.H. Fairchild
New in the Facilitators' Forum
Have you led a civic reflection discussion lately? Please share your experiences with us! |
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