April 15, 2008

Creating Aging-Friendly Communities

Posted in Conference sessions at 4:14 pm by CarolynC

In February and March, I participated in Creating Aging-Friendly Communities, an online conference at http://www.icohere.com/agingfriendly/.  One of the tracks was civic engagement and a couple of presenters were excellent! 

The AdvantAge Initiative had a particularly useful paper on using focus groups, available at http://www.vnsny.org/advantage/tools/3a_Focus_Groups.pdf 

Lara Birnback of Public Agenda, http://www.publicagenda.org/ talked about 10 Lessons of Successful Engagement.  I have not found these on the Public Agenda site, but she sent them to me:

1. Begin by listening;

2. Attend to people’s concerns;

3. Reach beyond the usual suspects;

4. Frame issues for the public, not experts;

5. Provide the right type and amount of information at the right time.

6. Help people move beyond wishful thinking.

7. Expect obstacles and resistance.

8. Create multiple, varied opportunities for deliberation and dialogue;

9. Respond thoughtfully to the public’s involvement;

10. Build long term capacity as you go.

For these two alone the conference was worth my time.  And while I am wortking on a senior services plan, this information is applicable to any age.

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