Lesson 6: Use Grassroots Discussion To Create Commitment

MCCR president Randy Parry considers community meetings for grassroots visioning “the foundation of everything we’ve done. If we hadn’t involved the people right away, they wouldn’t have had ownership in what’s happening, and our chances for success would be minimal.”

There’s a danger, he warns, that established leaders might not like a process where everyone has an equal voice. “There can be an attitude of control,” he says, “a phenomenon of established leaders versus everyone else.” Even if that problem doesn’t materialize there’s risk of discussions becoming emotional, because so many issues are central to participants’ daily lives. And when tempers flare some people fall silent. In Miner County, though, that didn’t happen because, Randy says, “students were involved. When young people were in the room, adults demonstrated their best behaviors.” Further, Randy credits students expressing a desire for change as what led the community to ask, what do we want to become?

“Never before had we come together to talk openly not just about problems, but the underlying causes of problems,” he says. “Years later people still talk about those meetings where they got to know one another without divisions or arguments.”

People in a community visioning process can’t help thinking about other communities, Randy adds, “and they give themselves a sort of ultimatum—if we don’t do this, here’s what happened in other places we know. And if we don’t do it, who else can? When lots of people come to that realization together, that’s how you gain long-term commitment to positive change.

Miner County Lessons

Lesson 6: Use Grassroots Discussion To Create Commitment