Clear Vision Empowerment Summit
The Clear Vision Eau Claire engagement initiative was launched in 2007 with a series of community stakeholder meetings facilitated by the National Civic League as part of a citizen led community visioning process. A diverse group of community members met at Peace Lutheran Church in Eau Claire from October 2007 through May 2008 and produced a vision action report with 6 key priority areas and 125 specific action steps. The ‘vision’ of Clear Vision rests on three core principles:
- Preserving the quality of life;
- Transforming the local economy; and
- Empowering the individual.
The underlying premise is that active and meaningful participation by community residents in strengthening their individual public lives will result in a a connected and collaborative community where individuals, families, and businesses thrive and flourish.
Over the past several years, Clear Vision has refined a civic organizing strategy for developing the core civic problem solving skills of ordinary people to do extraordinary public work in their neighborhoods and local communities. Civic organizing is a conceptual framework that integrates active civic engagement into everyday environments for the purpose of solving public problems and sustaining the broad civic base necessary to govern effectively in a democracy. In this framework, civic engagement is viewed as ordinary people coming together to deliberate and take action collectively on public problems or issues that they themselves have defined as important and in ways they have decided are appropriate.
The Clear Vision model emphasizes civic training, developing joint public leadership of elected officials and citizens, and realigning the institutions and spaces where people do public work with more participatory approaches. Efficacious and enduring civic participation requires two things. First, community members must learn and use more effective public problem solving skills. Second, community governance institutions such as local governments and civic organizations, must create more opportunities and public spaces for active engagement by sparking involvement, equipping engagement, and embedding collaboration in the community DNA.
After five years experience convening and training and support multiple civic work groups, Clear Vision found that many of its original 125 action steps had been addressed. Clear Vision began planning last February for a Fall 2012 Community Empowerment Summit that would bring together diverse community members throughout the Chippewa Valley, prioritize a new round of community issues, organize and train multiple civic work groups in core problem solving skills, and launch the work groups by the end of this year. Formal kickoff of the Empowerment Summit engagement process will take place within a few days and will integrate both online and face-to-face engagement through a new partnership with MindMixer, an exciting new online idea generation and engagement tool.
The Summit engagement meetings are scheduled for
- Thursday October 4, 6:30-9pm
- Thursday October 25, 6:30-9pm
- Thursday November 8, 6:30-9pm
- Thursday November 15, 6:30-9pm
The Empowerment Summit is open to anyone in the Chippewa Valley interested in getting involved in their local communities.
Look for the official Empowerment Summit kickoff announcement and how you can participate.