The past few months have been an exciting time at the Cleveland Coalition. We’ve reformulated our mission, vision and purpose, brought in new members, and picked out a new project. We will provide an opportunity for you to join other social justice activists to work to build leadership and public discourse in Cleveland that is worthy of the talented and decent people who live and work here. Here is recap of all that we’ve accomplished:
On Saturday, November 5, members of the Cleveland Coalition’s extended family convened at Graham Veysey’s office on W 29th Street for Part I of the Cleveland Coalition’s planning retreat. Over 15 people gathered, made up evenly of the group’s founding members and new recruited leadership that had been invited to join in the work and help shape the organization’s vision and goals moving forward. We were joined by the talented facilitator Sally Breyley Parker who guided the group through a series of conversations from which emerged a concise sense of purpose driving those who attended and our group as a whole.
On Saturday, December 3, we met again to refine the EDUCATE, COLLABORATE, ACT continuum, which is essential to our organization. Our group will need to learn to manage the “Act” dilemma between having a direct impact on an issue and providing a respectful “container” for advocacy work. Coalitions of broad groups of people are necessary for work we do. We will use Stakeholder mapping and other strategy tools to develop outreach and partnership for our projects.
At the December 17th meeting, we proposed a wide range of project ideas and voted on the top 3. The topics ranged from education, to transparency, to innovation. Also we discussed regionalism, the environment, prisoner re-entry, and housing. When looking at each of the issues, the presented examined the breadth, if the issue was under analyzed and what tangible outputs could result. The Cleveland Coalition prides itself on adding to the conversation in a meaningful way to inspire local level change. The topics we settled on as a group were transparency, prisoner re-entry and innovation/entrepreneurship.
Our most recent meeting took place on January 28th at the Cleveland Restoration Society, where members presented the 3 issues from the last meeting. The energy in the room lead to a lively conversation about important topics that effects us in everyday life. The vote at the end for the Transparency & Public Engagement Project won unanimously. While the details of this project will emerge over the coming month, it will provide tools for citizens and public officials to engage in meaningful dialogue. The group also committed to producing more web content and meeting in social settings with the hopes of including more members and inspiring conversation in the community.
