URGEnt Presentation & Workshops
Thanks to all who participated in the Reimagine Charity Seminar on 9/28! It was an engaging and thought provoking day. We'll be following up with everyone soon and looking to bring our gifted facilitator, Donell Woodson, back for continued consultation.
“Thank you for organizing the workshop. I thought it was excellent. I’m always skeptical about another workshop. This was a pleasant surprise.”
Project URGE, Inc. enlisted the services of SKEO Solutions, who have been engaged in bringing communities together in regard to problem solving across the country, but mostly the east coast. One of their successes included work in Geneva, NY, which was highlighted at the workshop.
We know Rochester makes headlines for the negative outcomes related to poverty, drugs, crime, racism and more. In our discussions for the last dozen years or more there has been a nagging question of how do we inspire people to work more effectively with one another? As faith leaders we all know there is greater potential and especially for our great city!
Project URGE felt the necessity to bring in a group from outside of Rochester that had a track record of successes to facilitate both teaching the principles of the workshop, but also to engage people in dialogue without having any prior history with any of the participants. Their experience in getting communities together to work through challenges such as bureaucracy, environmental concerns, economic development and racial issues were key factors in enlisting their services.
The Building Unity Out of Chaos - Collaborative Problem Solving Workshop laid the ground work for developing relationships, consensus building and aligning leaders around the challenges chosen in the distilling process of the workshop.
The process brought us to the point that the participants settled on two key areas of focus:
1) Organizational partnerships (between churches, faith-based and community based organizations) - developing a structure to work from, developing neighborhood partnerships, urban/suburban church partnerships and developing trust.
2) Charity and Justice - while charity is necessary, there should be a more focused strategy toward working toward a more justice oriented framework.
3) Building relationships across racial and cultural divides were also an important ingredient to achieving progress toward these challenges.
The overarching goals are to diminish the silos, work on relationship building in regard to cultural and racial issues and creating a forum where strategic steps toward alleviating conditions of poverty can be discussed, agreed upon and implemented. The follow up sessions over the course of 2016-2017 will be key ingredients toward the success of this collaborative process.
We invite people to join us at the Collaborative Table! The table is set and is waiting...
