Early in 2008, after returning from United Way of America’s Community Leadership Conference, Richard Hardwood, founder and president of the Hardwood Institute for Public Innovation wrote “10 Keys to Living United in America.”
The ninth key is the inspiration for a new category of our blog.
We must learn to tell stories of hope and change - what might be called civic parables [emphasis added]- so that people can see themselves in public life. But this requires us to reject the usual hype and glossed-over public relations, and instead turn to authentic reflections of people’s journeys around change, including why they started out where they did, how they progressed, what went wrong along the way, and what worked. Then maybe more people will step forward.
In CIVIC PARABLES we invite people to share their “stories of hope and change.”
- We are soliciting contributions from “agents of change” who take the risk of authentic reflection on what change requires of us.
- We are inviting your comments that in turn reflect upon the story or extend it by adding a story of your own.
We are mindful of Harwood’s observation that, “Bringing about hope and change was never easy, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that our current time will be any different.”
We also appreciate his take on what “Live United” means (and what it doesn’t mean).
It would be easy to translate the phrase “Live United” to mean that we all simply want to get along, that we envision a world in which disagreements and tensions do not exist. But such a vision would be naive and deny the realities of public life. For me, “Live United” is not rooted in a utopian vision. Rather, it is a call for each of us to step forward to engage with one another and to do our best to repair breaches in our lives and society.
To repair a breach, it must first be acknowledged - so, we expect some of our civic parables may challenge us - but they aim to inspire more than incite. In any event, civic parables aspire to be about what Hardwood calls, in Making Hope Real, “authentic hope.”
Authentic hope is gained when we tell stories of people striving to improve conditions, even when those stories contain their struggles, even their failings, for then people can see and hear themselves.
We’ve invited our first contributors. Expect to hear from them soon. Speaking for ourselves, we can’t wait.
This tax season United Way of Olmsted County Financial Stability Partnership once again joined with the long-standing free tax preparation services provided by AARP Tax-Aide Program to promote free tax preparation in Olmsted County. Other partners include The Salvation Army. The Rochester Senior Center, and Hawthorne Education Center as well as the Internal Revenue Service and the Minnesota Department of Revenue.
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