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Aug. 25, 2008
If you make it fun, they will come: Puget Sound activist shares tips for bringing neighbors together to solve community problems
Strategies for success to be taught in new UW certificate program
After hearing so much about the decline of community life in America, you might expect Seattle-based community organizer Jim Diers to radiate grim. Especially since Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, cites television as the greatest of all forces eroding community. But we can make coming together for common cause more compelling than television, says Diers, Director of UW-Seattle Community Partnerships and author of Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way, www.neighborpower.org. "If organizers can't make it fun, we're doing something wrong."
His 32-year career, which includes more than a decade as director of the City of Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods and his present role as an instructor in community organizing and development at the University of Washington, has taught him some simple rules of engagement that still hold true today. Those strategies form the heart of the new UW Certificate Program in Community Development that begins September 30.
Making community life fun again
More strategies for drawing people together
Launch of UW Certificate Program in Community Development
Projects of Office of UW-Seattle Community Partnerships
About UW Educational Outreach
Supplemental mini-feature: Tips for success as a community builder
Making community life fun again
Community organizers bring residents together to address issues that affect their daily lives, whether it's building a playground in a neighborhood lacking amenities for children, creating affordable housing, or bringing medical services or job training to a struggling community. For those who doubt that "fun" can be injected into the search for solutions to real life community problems, consider these examples, says Diers:
Fremont installed the troll, now a neighborhood icon, as a strategy for countering problems of illegal dumping under the bridge. Neighbors painted murals on Columbia City's boarded up storefronts to make it look like they were open for business (soon real businesses wanted to get in on the action). Diers and his UW students worked with the community of Toppenish, Washington to build a large straw bale dragon as a way of displacing gang activity with legitimate activity in Lincoln Park.
At their annual festival last year, Sustainable Ballard had an "undrivers" license station where, after committing to using modes of transportation other than a car (e.g. bike, walk, skateboard, or hang glide) you could get a laminated license certifying you to travel via their "Shufflebus," a foot-powered vehicle right out of the Flintstones.
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More strategies for drawing people together
A focus on fun is a powerful way to increase community participation. But Diers uses a number of additional strategies that make coming together compelling:
- Don't call a meeting when you can make it a social event!
- Hold events at the block level rather than citywide to increase a sense of participation.
- Tap into people's passions: identify community concerns and potential solutions by asking "what is your dream?" or "what keeps you up at night?"
- Focus on issues that are immediate, concrete, and realizable.
- Look first within the community, not outside it, for solutions to the problems it faces.
- Celebrate success and recognize caring neighbors.
Launch of UW Certificate Program in Community Development
These and other strategies for success will be introduced in the UW Certificate Program in Community Development. The 90 hour, nine month long program will also cover neighborhood planning, poverty alleviation, neighborhood revitalization, real estate development, and organizational development. Diers has recruited a team of noted Puget Sound community developers as instructors and program advisors. This is the first such program offered in the Puget Sound region in fifteen years (its predecessor, the Washington State Community Development Academy, operated for only one year in 1993-94).
Projects of Office of UW-Seattle Community Partnerships
In addition to his teaching duties, Diers has been instrumental in extending UW resources and expertise into communities in need. He and other colleagues at the UW have formed partnerships of mutual value for citizens and UW students at the same time. In White Center, for example, UW Urban Planning students worked with the community to produce a neighborhood plan.
One class of Landscape Architecture students involved elementary school students in designing and building a park and a class of Architecture students designed facade improvements for the business district. Business students worked with local merchants to develop business plans, and Social Work students provided support to community-based organizations. School of Public Health students designed a community health scan which was implemented by Sociology students.
UW Educational Outreach is the continuing and professional education division of the University of Washington, the nationally recognized public research institution based in Seattle. Helping the schools, colleges, and departments to administer evening master's degrees, certificate programs, distance and online learning, international outreach and English language programs, and more, UW Educational Outreach is one of the largest and most highly regarded continuing and professional education programs in the U.S.
Supplemental mini-feature: Tips for success as a community builder
Jim Diers' strategies for success as a community builder
How do you entice busy people to come together to address community issues and opportunities? How do you make it pleasurable and more compelling than TV? Here are a few of the strategies for success used by Jim Diers and other Puget Sound community organizers connected with the new UW Certificate Program in Community Development.
Have a sense of fun!
- Don't be a "GD activist" (grim and determined), Calgary community organizer Cesar Cala told Diers. We all know those sour activists who act like civic engagement is their cross to bear. They love to complain. Who would want to get involved with them?
- The key to involving people is to make community life fun again. As Diers' friend Jeff Bercuwitz says, "Why have a meeting when you can have a party?"
- The closer the action is to where people live, the more likely they are to get engaged. While there will undoubtedly be a larger turnout for a citywide meeting, there will never be a higher percentage of participation than if the gathering is held at the block level. A more localized event makes transportation and child care much easier. It also gives people a greater sense that their participation is important. After all, if they don't attend, who will? And, if they aren't present, they might be in trouble with their neighbors.
- If you want to get people involved, speak in language familiar to them. Don't use jargon or acronyms. You don't want those whom you're trying to reach to think they lack the expertise required for participation.
- In recruiting people, start with the networks to which they already belong. Just about everyone belongs to at least one network, either formal or informal. They likely don't have time to join yet another group. Besides, they have developed relationships within their existing network that make them comfortable.
- It is especially difficult to recruit people whose age, income, ethnicity or other characteristics set them apart from the existing members of your organization. If you want to create a multi-cultural community effort, it generally works best to identify and build alliances with existing networks of people who are underrepresented in your membership. These local networks could be centered on neighborhood, nationality, faith, education, business, recreation, environment, history, art, crime prevention, service, a hobby, or something else. There are literally dozens of networks in every neighborhood. When these networks are aligned, the community can exercise tremendous power.
- Focus on people's passions. Everyone cares deeply about something. People will get involved to the extent that we can tap into their passion. The key is to start, not with an answer or with a program, but with a question: "What is your dream or what keeps you up at night?"
- Use a different call than the meeting call. Many more people respond to the social call of community meals, parties, and festivals. Shy people may respond to the volunteer call as a tutor or mentor. And, everyone seems to love the project call. With projects, unlike with meetings, people make a short term commitment and they see results. There's a role for everyone young people, elders, people with disabilities, architects, artists, construction workers, etc. The more varied the calls used, the more broad-based and inclusive the organization will be.
- Focus on issues that are immediate, concrete, and realizable. People need to see results if they are going to stay involved. This is especially true of people who have felt powerless and are getting involved for the first time. So you probably don't want to start by working on world peace or global warming. Once people have a sense that they can make a difference, they will be more ready to tackle the larger issues.
- Look first within the community, not outside it, for solutions to the problems it faces. Look beyond labels - at risk youth, immigrants, disabled, homeless, etc. - to find the abundant assets that exist in every neighborhood and in every individual. Everyone has gifts of the head (knowledge), heart (passion), and hands (skills).
Identifying ways in which people can contribute those gifts to the community is a wonderful way to get them engaged. (For example, Mike Peringer, who works in Seattle's SODO neighborhood, was embarrassed by the appearance of 5th Avenue South. He wanted to paint murals over the graffiti-strewn backs of warehouses flanking the street by involving young people who had been arrested for graffiti. Today, Seattle enjoys 40 murals along the Urban Art Corridor, courtesy of the ArtWorks program.)
- Getting results is important, but much of the potential value is lost if you fail to celebrate success and thank those who made it possible. Neighbors need to know that people like themselves were responsible. The sharing of such stories inspires people about what can be accomplished when they work together and build on their assets.
Public recognition also motivates those being recognized to do more. (For example, Phinney Ridge activist Judith Wood convinced Norm Rice to designate the Saturday before Valentine's Day as Neighbor Appreciation Day, a grass roots observation that continues to be observed in neighborhoods throughout Seattle.)