CAPACITY BUILDING
Fanning Institute faculty conducted a public meeting facilitation workshop for the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department staff and A-CC’s Comprehensive Planning Steering Committee members. This four hour intensive session, designed to prepare staff and volunteers to gather public input and meet the requirements of Georgia’s Comprehensive Planning process, covered facilitation basics such as managing group dynamics, as well as advanced techniques for accomplishing tasks through agenda setting, the nominal group technique, and Force-Field Analysis. Danny Bivins, Langford D. Holbrook, and Delene Porter are involved in this project.
EXPLORATION
Danny Bivins, Jan Coyne, and Langford Holbrook facilitated a session of 200 state park rangers at their annual conference at Unicoi State Park. The session discussed what is and isn’t working well within the park system, and the changes needed. The session provided upper management with a better understanding of the day to day challenges faced by on the ground employees.
IMPLEMENTATION
Matt Bishop published “Owning Up To Poverty in America” in the Winter 2007 UGA Research Magazine: http://www.researchmagazine.uga.edu/winter2007/owningup.htm.
Culminating a year of community input, Partners for a Prosperous Athens (PPA) unveiled its OneAthens strategy to 1,200 Athenians. The OneAthens strategy addresses the underlying causes of poverty through 10 initiatives, including the creation of a regional economic development entity; the provision of early learning opportunities for all children; the implementation of new educational and workforce development models; the creation of family engagement centers; the increase in public transportation; the construction and preservation of affordable housing; the development of a health care foundation; the reduction of teen pregnancy; the expansion of human and economic development programs; and the creation of a OneAthens organization and community foundation to oversee the implementation of PPA’s recommendations. Fanning faculty and staff contributed greatly to making the March 19th meeting a success and to the continued facilitation of the PPA process. Fanning’s Joe Whorton, Sandy Christopher, Jim Geiser, and Delene Porter will continue to provide support as PPA evolves into OneAthens and recommendations are implemented.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
In the March issue of Georgia Trend magazine about Carroll County’s award-winning Greenspace Initiative, Commission Chair Robert Barr noted a correlation between his work on the Initiative and his experience with the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership: “Being part of the IGEL classes was a coalescing feature for me in how to approach environmental concerns, as it relates to development, in a balanced way.”
Governor Sonny Perdue, Chair of the Georgia Rural Development Council (GRDC), signed an Executive Order launching the Department of Community Affairs’ (DCA) Communities of Opportunity Initiative (CO-OP). Matt Bishop, lead faculty from Fanning who conducted the research for CO-OP, played an instrumental role in crafting the language contained in the Order. Bishop and other Fanning faculty and staff will continue to assist DCA and the GRDC with implementing CO-OP. The Executive Order can be found at: http://www.dca.state.ga.us/communities/regionalism/programs/downloads/031207Gov%27sOfficeExecutiveOrder.pdf
