About A Small Group

A Small Group uses a means of engagement designed to:

• Acknowledge the interdependence of associations. To be serious about creating a restorative community, we need to organize our services around a neighborhood (i.e., a school building), instead of being organized around causes and disciplines. There needs to be a shift in our regard to boundaries.
  
• Change the conversation, from:
  • problem-solving to possibility,
  • negotiation and pursuit of narrow interests to the co-creation of common purpose,
  • blame to taking responsibility, and
  • retribution to restoration
    
• Make connection and relationship the point. Problems exist to create relationships, not the other way around. Politics create strange bedfellows; relationships create surprising friends and allies.
  
• Focus on gifts which replaces our focus on deficiencies. This is the work: to value and bring to the center the gifts of those in the community that remain on the margin.

Our Mission

We are committed to the creation of a restorative and reconciled community. Our strategy is to discover ways to engage the disengaged through working with existing associations and through direct invitation. Our work focuses on direct efforts to bring into conversation those groups of people who are not in relationship with each other. By this we mean to offer powerful tools and strategies of civic possibility, civic accountability and civic commitment; thus increasing the power of associations to engage citizens in their efforts.
 

The Theory

Our work is based on the work of Robert Putnam and John McKnight: That healthy democratic communities grow out of high civic engagement, with a high focus on the gifts and strengths of the communities and its citizens. Our work is to create conversations among diverse groups that have the power to shift our stance in the areas of concern to civic life. This shift of high civic engagement eventually shifts the paradigm:

• Good government does not create civic engagement; rather, government is a reflection of the citizenry. For example, good elected officials and effective police are the result of a positive civil society.
• Health equity for all is not just the domain of health professionals, but ultimately comes from citizens taking responsibility for their own health and the health of others.
• Active citizens create a strong local economy.
• Parents, communities and active institutions create educational equity and student achievement. We do not need more and better teachers.
• The media does not create the public debate - they are a reflection of the conversation we have chosen to have. Our silence and passivity creates the space for the media to profit from the woundedness of community.
• More money and better leadership do not give us the community we desire. Our leaders and professionals in health care, government, education and business are doing what they can to help. The next step forward will come from more engaged citizens.

It is the citizen’s connection to each other that needs to shift.

 

Learn more about the 6 Conversations and Civic Engagement.