The city has hired a consultant to train local community groups, non-profits and the City Council to help improve leadership and implement some of the ideas generated at the Galesburg Advantage Visioning forums.

Six visioning forums earlier this year were attended by hundreds of local people who came together to discuss ideas to improve Galesburg. The city is now working to take those discussions to the next level by building a structure to develop ideas aired at the meetings.

The visioning process, which began at the Galesburg Advantage forums, has been refined to focus on three areas: Bringing ideas to fruition through partnering local agencies with themes; targeting participation with traditionally under-represented populations; and building capacity in local agencies to support the vision concepts and cultivate leadership.

Later in the fall, Galesburg Advantage will match those themes with local organizations which can begin to tackle them. The two workshops in September will be sponsored by the city in partnership with Galesburg Community Foundation, Carl Sandburg College and University of Illinois Extension.

The visioning sessions finished in April and the city has been working with a number of local groups to see how ideas generated at the forum can be developed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Capacity Building, Civic Engagement, Community Development, Community Foundations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.