V. Summary: How to Do What We Did, Even Better

This question has been addressed all along, but here's a condensed summary you may find useful:

• Define and refine your concept, identifying the communities you will work with by drawing a "map" of those communities, the influential individuals within them, and how they relate to one another
• Clarify the terms you will use to identify these communities
• Create a timeline and, half-way through your project year, revise the timeline to take into account reality
• From the beginning, pay explicit attention to the dynamics of race, class, gender, ability/disability, sexual preference, as they relate to your project.
• Try to find sensitive facilitators already experienced in group process and not easily intimidated; they will still need outside training to facilitate dialogue
• Encourage facilitators to keep a written log of their learnings, observations, and process as the project goes along
• Encourage one-on-one, informal sharing between facilitators, outside of staff meetings
• Encourage facilitators, above all, to stay present, to check assumptions, and to enjoy the ride
• Scheduling, for us, was the single most challenging issue, requiring tremendous patience and persistence. Be ready for the frustrations of reschedulings, cancellations, and no-shows. Sense of humor is essential, as are carefully kept logs and confirmation calls.
• Documentation: it's difficult to discipline oneself to document the work as it tumbles along, but it's even more difficult to recreate it afterward. Extensive note-taking is essential, and writing up summaries of dialogues, learnings, and suggestions soon after dialogues have taken place is extremely useful.
• Interns: Yes! An intern presented herself to us midway through the year, and for the short time she was with us, work proceeded at a much more disciplined and orderly pace. Since she was the only one not responsible for coordinating dialogues, she could effectively coordinate information-sharing. She also enjoyed dialogues as a participant and honed her own facilitation skills by observation.
• Informal gatherings for dialoguers: Yes! We found a certain number of people who simply could never schedule a one-on-one dialogue or group dialogue, but who managed to show up to our informal Activist Dialogue Project Brunches. This was also a place where staff, board, facilitators, project participants and other activists could gather, blow off steam about unbearably repetitive mistakes in the movement, enjoy each other's company, and boost morale.
• Celebrate! In our case this was a matter of a "Last Brunch" in which a diverse set of activists from age 20 (actually the youngest was 3 years old) to 70-something shared their political awakenings. It was quite fascinating and lively, but small. For other or future Dialogue Projects, we could imagine a larger celebration in which all the participants in a particular Dialogue Project could be invited to meet each other after a year-long series of one-on-one, group, and informal gatherings.



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