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Mobilize Your Community or Neighborhood for Sustainability: Five Introductory Workshops for Community Engagement How do we bring together the people in our neighborhoods and communities to imagine how we want to live and what it would take to live more sustainably? How do we find out what is working in our back yard, in our region and around the world that can help us live into the future we imagine? Once we have done that, how do we mobilize for action to create a more sustainable and self-sufficient community? How do we build and sustain the relationships that we need to create and continue to live together in new ways, balancing tensions and the diverse needs of all? Each of the 75 minute workshops in this series introduces you to a way of bringing people together that enables you to answer these questions for your own community. Come to one or all of these Introductory Workshops and learn how people all over the world are coming together to build a future for themselves, their families and their communities, one neighborhood at a time! You will learn how to use them separately and together to create what you want in your own back yard. SPACE IS LIMITED! These workshops are free; however space is limited so we ask that you sign up in advance for the ones you would like to attend. Simply send us an email with your contact information and the title of the workshop(s) you will be participating in. betterliving@blueoceanevents.org
	Helen Spector designs and facilitates large group processes to develop common ground and actionable strategies around important issues and complex future-oriented questions in organizational and community settings, using approaches including, Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, Open Space and Future Search Conferences. Her work also includes strategic visioning and organizational planning, structure redesign and implementation; and executive coaching, management and professional staff development, team building and work group effectiveness.
Helen works from basic principles focused on getting results. Whether designing a visioning process, a problem solving process or a large group event, the fundamental principles are the same: Design to desired outcomes Get the whole system in the room Connect the local with the global Develop new thinking grounded in our most successful experiences Encourage the client to manage as much of the work as possible. These principles provide the starting point for all of the large group approaches currently in use and support building the relationships and networks essential for making change happen in our communities and groups today. Helen has written articles for the Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today’s Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems (second edition) and the Handbook of Large Group Methods: Creating Systemic Change in Organizations and Communities. She teaches in the Organizational Psychology Masters Program at JFK University.

	Heather Tischbein has 30 years experience in nonprofit management, with a focus on sustainability and public education. Recently she has been working as a consultant assisting organizations to manage the challenges of transformative change by designing and facilitating effective meetings and conversations that allow for breakthrough thinking, inspired creativity, and innovation. Heather has special expertise in World Café, Conversation Café, Open Space Technology, and Dynamic Facilitation. She is a certified mediator with Community Mediation Services of Vancouver-Clark County and is certified with the International Association for Public Participation. As a community activist, she currently serves on the boards of directors of InterACT Clark County and the Co-Intelligence Institute, as well as on the Clark County Food System Council and the City of Vancouver’s Sustainability Task Force.

Friday Noon - 1:15 pm
Blueprint for Successful Meetings: Designing meetings that work to engage people and get things done

If you could make sure that at every meeting you hold, you and the other participants get done the work you came to do, wouldn’t you want to do that? The Blueprint for Successful Meetings provides a tried and true way to design every meeting you hold for results.

Come learn the easy and dependable way to focus on the sustainable outcomes you want, gather the people who can help you achieve them, and select the approach best matched to produce them.

Come to this workshop to learn how to make the most of your meeting time, AND to make the best use of what you learn at the other workshops in this series!

Friday 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Open Space: What we care passionately about and want to take action on

Imagine you could gather all the people in your neighborhood or community to talk about the things they care passionately about and want to act on.

Open Space provides a fast, inexpensive and simple way to invite everyone with a passion for community connection and sustainability to talk about the concerns and issues for which they want to see something happen. It provides an opportunity for the people in your community to engage with each other, to become excited, innovative, creative and ready to take responsibility for what they care about.

Come to this workshop to learn how to plan and host an Open Space in your neighborhood to learn what people in your community care enough about to want to make a difference.

Friday 3:30 pm - 4:45 pm
Appreciative Inquiry: What we already know about sustainability and what works

In every community, organization, group, something is working. Learn how to discover what is working for sustainability and green living in your neighborhood, community, city and region.

Appreciative Inquiry and Asset-Based-Community-Development (ABCD) help us find the success stories right in our back yards, and share our experiences in ways that inspire positive and productive action.

Come to this workshop to learn how to see your world with new eyes and ask the questions that unleash the potential of your neighbors to transform your community.

Gather your friends and neighbors and dream your sustainable future into existence together. We know that we find ways to accomplish what we feel strongly drawn to, so let’s find out what our dream of sustainability looks like and make it happen!

World Café involves a series of small café conversations that allow us to see the patterns of our desires and how they come together to form the future we want to live in together. We share our hopes and dreams with each other in ways that create energy for action.

Polarity Management: How we manage our conflicts to act together for a better community

Making the rubber meet the road—gaining traction for change in our communities. Moving differently into the future creates or highlights tensions that get in the way of achieving our new future. Some of these tensions are problems that we can solve together, but others are basically unsolvable—dilemmas to be managed.

Polarity Management allows us to see a more complete picture of the tensions in our world and to respect the wisdom of those who are resisting our “solutions”. If we can do this we can find sustainable ways to live together into the future that we all want to inhabit!

Putting it All Together: How we create and continue the cycle of organizing for