Make-up of Regional Dialogue Cohort Facilitators
To prepare them for their facilitation, the Cohort spent two days preparing with Cliff Jones, a consultant with 30+ years of experience in facilitation, organizational development, and workplace diversity. He is a founder and partner with Capacity Building Partnerships.
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Regional Dialogues
The Dialogues were highly structured to create opportunities for each Regional Participant to share their experience and insights. This structure was particularly important since there was limited time (3 hours) and large groups (30-45 Regional Participants).
Participants used personal experiences and observations and their view of community challenges to define urban and rural communities. All Dialogues included people that identified as urban, rural and in between. Some also used the geographic boundary of the Cascade Mountain Range as the line dividing urban (Portland and the Willamette River Valley) and rural (eastern Oregon), with the region south and east of Eugene also being included within the rural description.
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At each Dialogue, two facilitators broke up into small groups with 5-7 Participants. Each group followed a similar agenda:
Welcome, Agenda and Large-group Introductions - 25 minutes
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Introductions within small groups - 15 minutes
First Small Group Conversation – 40 minutes
First question: How would you describe urban rural differences and please give examples from your perspective? What assumptions, negative or positive, impact how the differences show up?
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Break - 10 minutes
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Second Small Group Session – 40 minutes
Second question: What are the top 1-3 issues experienced by your community? What are the barriers in getting those issues addressed? Do you have an example of what’s working in your community?
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Group Synthesis - 10 minutes
Each group identifies 3-6 issues that are most problematic or pervasive in their communities.
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Large Group Share - 25 minutes
Each group shared the 3-6 issues that their group selected.
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Wrap- up and Thank You - 10 minutes
What Issues Did Participants Bring Up the Most?
Notes from the small groups of the Regional Dialogues were used to create this chart below to give an idea of the issues that came up the most in the Regional Dialogues.
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*Issues that came up significantly more in rural Regional Dialogues (in other words, everywhere but Portland) are marked with *rural.
From left to right, back row: Tom Fuller, Class* 1, (Now Retired) Project Manager, Shiels Obletz Johnsen; Danny Santos, Class 7, Retired Willamette Law Associate Dean & Governors' Policy Advisor & Legal Counsel and that evening’s Guest Speaker; Steve Schulz, Class 32, Executive Director, Cycle Oregon; Kelly Poe, Class 30, Director of Community Based Services, Malheur Education Service District; Jake Gibbs, Class 28, Director of Partner Development, Lone Rock Resources, Roseburg; County Commissioner Simon Hare, Class 28, Former County Commissioner, Josephine County; Cliff Jones, Facilitation Trainer, Capacity Building Partnerships.
Left to right, front row: Connie Saldana, Class 19, Planner, Rogue Valley Council of Governments ; Senator Margaret Carter, Class 2, President, Margaret Carter & Associates; Valeria Pimentel, Class 29, Inmate Work Program Coordinator, Department of Corrections; Senator Susan Castillo, Class 16, Vice President, West Region, Project Lead the Way; Kristin Steele, Class 32, Fundraising Consultant, Swaim Strategies; Vicki Nakashima, Class 13, Volunteer, nonprofits, City of Portland, higher education, golf; Charles "Chuck" Hudson, Class 25, (Now Retired) Intergovernmental Affairs Director, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission; County Commissioner Melissa Cribbins, Class 27, County Commissioner, Coos County; Mariana Lindsay, Urban Rural Connection Project Coordinator.
*Class refers to the cohort member’s ALF Oregon class.