VMP seeks new way to improve village discourse

By Diane Chiddister

This weekend villagers have an opportunity to help improve the quality of Yellow Springs dialogue. The event, a workshop on community discourse, will take place Sunday, Dec. 2, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Great Room of the Senior Citizens Center. It is sponsored by the Village Mediation Program, or VMP.

“We would like to figure out a way to have a collaborative process that builds toward broad-based solutions to complex problems,” said VMP board member Len Kramer in an interview last week.

In recent years, especially since the recall election of 2000, local discussions on challenging issues seem especially rancorous, Kramer said. Many villagers feel concerned about the perceived divisiveness, according to Kramer, who said when VMP members recently spoke with local stakeholders about how the group could best help the community, several suggested that the group try to improve community discourse.

While Village Council and other organizations have attempted to include the community in making critical decisions, many villagers continue to feel that their concerns are not addressed, according to Kramer.

“We haven’t seen any forging of solutions that people feel have been collaboratively reached,” he said.

It turns out that Yellow Springs is far from alone in seeking a solution to divisiveness, Kramer said. Last summer he attended a workshop at the Dayton-based Kettering Foundation on improving community discourse, and found people from across the country seeking the same thing.

So if there isn’t yet a silver bullet available to improve the way that villagers resolve difficult issues, Kramer and the rest of the VMP hope they can create one. To do so, the group will use at Sunday’s workshop a process called Appreciative Inquiry. The process, created at Case Western Reserve University, is based on the notion that organizations move toward that which they ask questions about, and that if the organizations focus on positive attributes, they will see more of those attributes.

Specifically, at Sunday’s event, attendees will be divided into groups of eight to 10, then asked to partner with one other person. In that diad, the two persons will discuss “a time when you were involved in a community or group that was working with a controversial issue and you felt involved and effective in reaching a successful result,” according to a written VMP statement. “What was going on? Who was there? What was the result? What made it feel successful?”

After the pairs share their experiences with each other, they will report back to the small group about what they heard from each other. In the process, Kramer said in a written statement, “we will capture those conditions and factors that led to successful results.”

The VMP then hopes to come up with a process which the group can offer to Village Council for use on controversial or complex issues, Kramer said.

It’s not clear yet if there can be a process which helps municipalities reach the same sort of consensus that individuals reach when they are involved in mediation over disputes, Kramer said. But if there is one, the VMP hopes to find it.

For more information, contact Kramer at 767-2324 or lenkramer@earthlink.net.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com