What makes civic engagement truly authentic?
Monday, March 20, 2006
(The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation)All of The Harwood Institute's change efforts
are rooted in the notion that civic engagement
must be authentic. What we mean is that for
real, lasting change to take root, people have
to be engaged in a process that reflects the
reality of how people actually wrestle with
public issues.
Unfortunately
today, many of the mechanisms and systems we've
created in society fail to follow what we call
"The Path of Public Knowledge." We represent
the path as an inverted
triangle.
Instead of following the path,
people are asked to step up to the microphone
to give their two minutes of "input," or they
are brought to a meeting to decide among a
group of pre-selected policy choices without
ever having the chance to collectively engage
on their values or even wrestle with competing
values to understand what they as a community
care about and, most importantly, are willing
to make trade-offs on.
The Harwood
Institute has learned through its work that
meaningful engagement that leads to real public
knowledge that organizations and community
leaders can use allows people room to talk
about their aspirations for themselves and
their community. Only then can people begin to
recognize that many of the values they hold in
common are actually in conflict with one
another.
For example, we have often
heard in our engagement work around communities
and schools that residents value both small,
neighborhood schools, as well as diversity.
However, many neighborhoods have virtually no
diversity. These people must now wrestle with
these two values and determine what they are
willing to give up and what is most important
to them.
Only then can citizens make
decisions - policy choices - that are rooted in
their collective aspirations and values. The
problem is that our society is set up for
efficiency, which often drives engagement
leaders to seek out policy options before
people have had the chance to wrestle through
values and value trade-offs. This
short-circuits the engagement process and often
leads to unnecessary acrimony and decisions
that oftentimes in the end aren't met with a
great deal of community support (even though
the community was involved).
We as
individuals have habits and reflexes imbedded
within us that often drive us to move too
quickly to the bottom of the triangle - toward
policy choices - before we are ready.
Meaningful engagement that leads to public
knowledge takes time. It takes us allowing
ourselves room to examine our deeply held
beliefs and to recognize where they may be in
conflict. In the end though, this is the only
kind of engagement that will lead to decisions
that marshal the collective support of the
community and have a chance of leading to
lasting change.