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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

My Christian Leadership

The least of these. Community.  Quality of living.  These are all words that hold importance to me and to many in our community.  But when the rubber hits the road, sometimes the politics of putting these into action can be ... shall I say... tricky?

Lately, I find myself centered in a dialogue about transportation.  I had been invited into several community conversations about transportation, but no other nonprofits were in the room, and the conversations centered on subtopics like community design (eat, work, sleep, play all within a walkable space), or roads or traffic.  Yet no one was in the room and nothing was said about our fellow community members who aren't even on the roads.  As a result, elderly can't get out at night or to the doctor.  There are families participating in programs like Capital Idea or Family Care at Texas Baptist Children's Home and seeking better lives.  The result can be a break generational cycles that have kept them down, and yet they can't land that new job or travel to other parts of the city or county for other services that help them get back on their feet.  We also have youth who are considered "couch surfers" or homeless.  There are after school activities that are designed to move them into being productive citizens, like at the Boys and Girls Club, The Nest or YMCA, but when the programs are over, the doors are shut, and how do they get to shelter or somewhere safe?

By default, I'm someone who can't stand by, so I began meeting with city and county officials to learn more about what's been done in our cities' pasts so we can make a plan for the future.  I have now hosted two forums seeking the involvement of my fellow nonprofits to begin to label and quantify the need.  Meanwhile, I'm a new mom, with a whole different set of job expectations to balance.

I begin to wonder- if I don't stay involved, will the momentum from these forums and discussions really go anywhere?  I wonder how we paint a picture of quality of life for all in our communities while also remaining aware that some people in our community think that if we provide transportation services, we will begin to harbor more of "those people", and their definition of quality of life is threatened.

Even in my own sector, you find those individuals who you can tell have been there, done that, and now would like to rain on any parade of progress.  I got this email just today regarding the forum I hosted last Friday:

Amanda
I appreciate the time you have invested in this but the event was hardly a dialog but rather an infomercial for mass transit. The information presented has little if anything to do with the transportation issues faced by the clients we serve and I suspect most of the clients served by nonprofits here in X. I saw  or heard nothing that caused me to be optimistic about any meaningful intra city transportation here in X  in the foreseeable future.

Mass transit will certainly help those middle and upper middle class workers in X who need to commute to their jobs and that will certainly be a good thing but it will not change the day to day  reality for our clients.

In my opinion I also think the concept that any significant numbers of nonprofit clients will continue to call  time after time following repeated denials to assist in data gathering  seems quite unrealistic. There needs to be a better way to gather that data.

The speaker at the next event (name) makes a living from contracting with government entities re: transportation so I have a hard time imagining that the needs of nonprofit clients will be a focus of that event either. The agenda of all of these presentations is to gain voter acceptance for these mass transit projects and I have no delusion that it's about what's best  our nonprofit clients so I have decided that it's not an effective use of my time.

Respectfully ,
(Name)


So putting together what I learned from my class "Leadership: Community" I reached out to this person with the following email:

(Name),

Thank you for your feedback.  I hear you.  Friday did not fully follow the script that I intended and (name)took more time providing an update, and the wrong update, regarding mass transit.  (Mass Transit Rep) came to the first forum, in which he received great feedback from our fellow nonprofit partners.  Much of which he said he had never heard before, and would implement in future renderings of their plans .  He was invited back on the basis of providing a 10-15 minute max update from the dialogue we had had with him last October or so.  As you mentioned and witnessed, this is not what we got.

I am not a proponent specifically of Mass Transit.  I just happen to be included in several regional meetings about transportation, and no other nonprofits were even represented, and I quickly realized that the conversations focused on Mass Transit or on road projects or on traffic congestion.  No one in the room was bringing up the people who can’t even get on the road.  So I’ve attempted to resurrect the banner.  It’s my understanding that many people from our sector have tried to engage in the past, but found that the dialogue was, just as I described before, not all encompassing, and thus I believe many have decided not to invest further time.  My fear is that our clients then go unrepresented, and then there isn’t a voice in the room to say that we, as a community, want to shift the dialogue.

The only starting place I saw for real change was to educate the public on what the city has done in the past (the panel), and educate the community on the real need for accessibility (LaLena and Leslie).  Could it have been done better? I’m sure.  My agenda was not to come in with guns blazing and making any assumptions about what the solution is.  I understand that we need to have everyone at the table to be able to have buy in from all parties and be able to understand more so why the cities haven’t assumed certain responsibilities. In the same, after meeting with key city officials, I saw that we needed to help the cities to understand the limiting parameters as to why the nonprofit community hasn’t “owned it”.

I respect that you feel like this wasn’t an effective use of time.  I will say that since these two forums, two local foundations have approached me, letting me know that it has brought the matter to their attention and they are considering putting more funding out there for it.  I heard today from two people in the business community who came Friday that he didn’t even know this was an issue and was surprised by how many nonprofits were represented in the room.  Our forum was brought up twice today in a chamber transportation meeting by another business man in the financial industry, and he specifically shared about what was “eye opening” to him.

It sounds like you’ve been a part of the seasoned crew who have seen this dialogue pretty much go in circles with no real traction.  I’d ask you to reconsider your stance of disengaging from the effort, and rather, would you be willing to teach  me what you know?  I have tons of questions, and feel we can only learn and move forward by fully knowing our history- which is why there was such a focus this last Friday on the past efforts- so we all have a foundation to move forward from.  I respect the decision you make, but feel you could bring value to what is sure to be an uphill battle- but somebody’s got to do it.

Respectfully yours,

Amanda

So here I am, considering Christian Leadership... considering my community, and considering what my calling is to it?  Jesus knew politics of his time, and maintained his integrity of service and caring for "the least of these".  Here we are nealry 2000 years from the peak of his ministry, and still the objective remains to reflect him... and build comunity like He did.