Meeting Agenda to Identify the Issue in Your Community(2 hours)

Purpose of meeting:

To begin talking about a situation that is causing tension in our community or that presents a great opportunity.

1. Welcome and introductions (10 minutes)

Ask people to introduce themselves and talk about their connection to the community.

2. What brings us together (30 minutes)

Ask group members to respond to the following questions. Record the major ideas.

What is the issue that brings us together and who does it affect the most? How does the issue affect the community? Does it affect racial/ethnic groups differently,

if so, how? Does it have a greater impact on any other groups (youth, senior citizens, or others)?

3. Why you are committed to this issue and to this work (15 minutes)

Form groups of 3- 4 people. Discuss the two questions below for 10 minutes, then for 5 minutes, share highlights of your conversation with the larger group.

How has this issue touched you in some way?

Why do you have enough energy to work on this?

4. Who needs to be at the next meeting to further organize our work together (10 minutes)

Talk about these questions in pairs:

Who is most affected?

Who cares enough about this issue to come to an organizing meeting?

5. The Three Question Test (20 minutes)

As a group, talk about the issue you are hoping to address, and ask yourselves the following three questions. “Yes” answers to these questions indicate that you have a greater chance of success.

i. Is it relevant? Ask yourselves, if we posed this issue to potential participants, would they see how this issue affects them or their community? Would it make them more likely to come out to talk and act?

ii. Is it timely? Is there something about asking this issue now that makes this timely? If we act, can something really good happen in the community? If we fail to act, can something bad happen in the community?

iii. Can we do anything about the issue? If a person understands that this issue is important to them, and if they believe the conversation is timely, will the conversations turn into action? Will the action make any difference?

6. Planning next steps (20 minutes)

If we decide to move ahead, our next step would be an organizing session. In this session we have identified and issue. We have tested our question to ensure that the answers to our Three Question Test are, “Yes!”

As a group, answer these questions to help you plan your next steps:

What are the important details new people we invite to the next meeting need to know?

Who do we want to make sure will be here? Who will invite them?

Are there questions to answer or actions to take before our next meeting? Who will act on these?

7. Deciding the agenda for the next organizing session (10 minutes)

Here are some ideas for topics to cover in the next meeting.

An overview of today’s meeting

An overview of how these dialogue circles work

We will engage the group in small group discussions like we did in this meeting. Start with the discussion, “Why is this issue important to you? What commitment do you have that cause you to invest some of your on time and energy to find a solution?”

We will consider the assets what we have by discussing the gifts or community assets we have that give us hope that we could do something important about this issue.

We will discuss our challenges and how we will address them.

We will divide responsibilities among the group to move the dialogues forward.

8. Closing Comments (5 minutes)

Announcement of next meeting date; thanks for attending.