Inviting Topics for helping social agencies work together?

[Joelle Lyons Everett]

Doug--

25 years ago, the community where I live was concerned about the fact that 
community systems were not working together.   Lots of people with good ideas, 
but the available energy and resources were going in too many directions.

A community group convened a meeting.   Open Space had not yet been invented, 
but we invited people from major community systems (city and county 
government, schools, college, social services, service clubs) to an all-day meeting to 
look at the future we desired for the county.   We had about a hundred people, 
a more-structured design than I would use today, plenty of great 
conversations.

This meeting was repeated 4 times over a period of five years, with many good 
outcomes.   Social-service agencies decided that they needed to talk to each 
other more often, and began a monthly lunch meeting to talk about shared 
concerns.   Five years after this program ended, a grant proposal was written--I 
don't know who initiated the idea, but the directors of 65 different agencies 
and service providers signed off on the same proposal--something that I know 
would not have happened ten years earlier.

Joelle



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