[OSList] ost in community building/organizing

Sat Sep 15 01:10:49 PDT 2012

Very nice to read again...

Thanks Peggy... and Chris!

Artur

________________________________
 From: Peggy Holman <peggy at peggyholman.com>
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> 
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 3:11 AM
Subject: Re: [OSList] ost in community building/organizing

It's a fabulous story.  You can get the whole book:
http://www.bkconnection.com/changehandbook

or just the OST chapter:
http://www.bkconnection.com/ff_details.asp?ID=9781605090290

or the unedited text of Chris' story from the draft of the chapter is below.

Peggy

Opening Space
in Community
In January 2005 under the auspices of the federal
government’s Urban Aboriginal Strategy (UAS), 275 people met in Prince George,
British Columbia, Canada to address the complex needs of the inner city
Aboriginal community in that city of 80,000.  They used Open Space Technology to identify priority areas and create a
consortium of projects aimed at making a difference in a community riddled with
poverty, violence, addictions and health issues.
But this was no ordinary
gathering.  The 275 people included
regular citizens, youth, elders, disabled folks, folks with mental illness, the
poor and dyslexic and the rich and educated.  
The sponsoring agencies, a
loose committee of service providers, government and local Aboriginal groups
set the stage for the success of this event.  They decided that the UAS should not be controlled by the existing
agencies and organizations.  To solicit
community leadership, the agencies committed to turning the UAS over to the
community.  That willingness and openness
made a huge difference on the day.  In
the pre-meeting, phrases like "we need new ideas to grow" and
"supporting community leadership" became touchstones for the media
campaign that formed the invitation.  The
sponsors stated their desire to be completely transparent in how this process
was to unfold.  They even committed to
publishing a summary of the OST results in the local paper.  Over three weeks these messages were repeated
in local media with the starling results.
The agenda was set within
the first hour of the day and the first of 55 discussion groups met on a huge
range of issues. By the end of the day the group had produced a 63 page
proceedings document with summaries from 41 groups.  
On day two, about 100 people
returned to work on projects.  People
reviewed the previous day’s proceedings, space was opened again and people were
invited to post invitations to champion new projects.  Participants were asked for passion to be
tightly bound to responsibility on this day as they deliberated on how to “get
it out of the room.”  
Project champions came
forward from a wide spectrum of experience and background, from poor single
mothers to City councilors.  Twenty-four
project postings were made and these convened into 19 groups addressing a wide
variety of community issues.  All of them
found support from existing organizations and in just one and a half hours,
partnerships were made, action plans drafted and in some cases, goals,
objectives and visions were written. One group became so close that when they
were finished, they stood in a circle for a minute tightly holding hands and
prayed together. All of this was self-organizing, all of it happened in Open
Space.
Within three weeks of the
Open Space event, most of the champions had hosted follow-up meetings and
attracted funding sponsors and other resources.  By six weeks after the event the project champions had formed a
collaborative decision making body that would oversee the strategy and make
funding recommendations to the federal government. 

(Thanks to Chris Corrigan, www.chriscorrigan.com, for this
story.)

_________________________________
Peggy Holman
peggy at peggyholman.com

15347 SE 49th Place
Bellevue, WA  98006
425-746-6274
www.peggyholman.com
www.journalismthatmatters.org

Enjoy the award winning Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity

"An angel told me that the only way to step into the fire and not get burnt, is to become 
the fire".
  -- Drew Dellinger

On Sep 13, 2012, at 7:05 PM, Chris Corrigan wrote:

There is a story in The Change Handbook in the Open Space chapter that I wrote about organizing in an urban native community in Prince George Canada.  That might be a good reference.
>
>
>Chris
>
>---
>CHRIS CORRIGAN
>http://www.chriscorrigan.com
>+1 604 947 9236
>
>On 2012-09-13, at 3:14 PM, Raffi Aftandelian <raffi_1970 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>fellow spaceniki,
>>can anyone be of assistance to my friend david mccain?
>>
>>
>>thanks,
>>raffi
>> 
>>powered by ubuntu 10.4
>>
>>
>>Hi. I'm David McCain and I'm a MA Candidate in the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ.  I have participated in a number of OSTz (several led by Raffi - thanks for posting this, Raf:) and I am considering organizing one regarding a community center that is looking to expand its operations in Flagstaff.  I'm very interested in connecting with OST folks in the area and finding information on OSTz that have been held in a "community organizing" framework.  This information would would help me compose a research paper on the project.
>>
>>I have two requests:
>>
>>	1. Are you aware of any information describing the use of OST for "community-building/organizing"?  I'm thinking that proceeding books or journal articles are two possible sources.
>>
>>	2. Are you aware of OST practicioners in Flagstaff, AZ or Phoenix?
>>Please email me with your responses at dm836 at nau.edu.
>>Peace,
>>Dave
>_______________________________________________
>>OSList mailing list
>>To post send emails to OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
>>To unsubscribe send an email to OSList-leave at lists.openspacetech.org
>>To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
>>http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
>>_______________________________________________
>OSList mailing list
>To post send emails to OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
>To unsubscribe send an email to OSList-leave at lists.openspacetech.org
>To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
>http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
>

_______________________________________________
OSList mailing list
To post send emails to OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
To unsubscribe send an email to OSList-leave at lists.openspacetech.org
To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20120915/f68b9636/attachment-0002.htm>