Terry Poling, Micheal Roblee & Kent Roberts

Pontiac Cafe facilitators with Meta Dynamics and the Civility Center respectively.

Coming soon the collective wisdom of their efforts gathered from the meeting on October 11, 2005


NEW!

Pontiac Cafe Dialogue 10-11-05

Session One – Round One

What are the strengths of our community?
Location
People
Strong sense of community
Service and organizations
Diversity of people
Diverse service organizations
People are relentless –They care
Sense of safety
Sticking together
Faith-Based community
Strong infrastructure
City with a heart
Senior strength
Secure Pension Fund
Diverse Housing stock
Growing economic development
City experiencing rebirth
GM Power Train HQ
Home Ownership
Business Diversity
Ethnocentric Pride
Successful community events
Silverdome Property
Crystal Lake Property

What is working well in Pontiac?

Session One – Round Two

Why are these strengths?

Why does it work?


Session One – Round Three

What are the common Themes and Patterns we see regarding our Strengths?
People
Diversity
Faith Based Culture
Location
Reputation
History
New Housing and Growth

What is working?


Session One – Round Four

What’s important about what we are hearing in terms of themes and patterns?

Session One – What’s Next?

Each one bring one youth and one senior to the next dialogue gathering on November 15, 2003
Communicate the outcomes from this October 11th gathering
Bring people from low and moderate income groups and other stakeholders
Must build trust between all assembled
How do we build trust?
Pull elected officials together to help development and implement action plan to improve the school district
Encourage leadership with great vision (align arrows)
Continued enlightenment and developing learning tools
Increased skill sets
Social Responsibility to share
Bring a friend
Get sponsorship
Need Money
Identify more resources
Continue this process throughout the entire community to help change the Pontiac Culture (encouraging people to share the same mind set and purpose)
Develop global and local projects using the dialogue process
Engage more people encourage more perspectives in the room
Young people must at the table
Build trust
Create an environment where its safe for all people to express themselves thru dialogue and implementation
Focus on positive and engage all stakeholders
Bring people together to get beyond “bickering”, “murmuring” and “complaining”
Increase involvement and perspectives
Hold dialogue sessions in all of the Districts and with all the different stake holders
Host a dialogue session with all of the candidates, elected officials and key stake holders before the general election
Touch and talk to those who can’t necessarily do anything for you
Share the rules of community engagement

Where do we go from here as a community?

What’s the Glue?

Faith-Based Community and the Churches
Desire & Passion for Pontiac
Family
People working together willingly and independently
Challenging the Status Quo
Rich Traditions
Children and Seniors

OUTCOMES

Learn how to better understand and respect each other’s perspectives
Recognize that you cannot build bricks without straw (there must be substance and meaningful outcomes)
Be willing to hear each other’s thoughts and ideas.
Be willing to agree and disagree and not be disagreeable
Give everyone a voice
Build a broad shared view of issues facing Pontiac
Understand where we go from here
Be committed to the process
Everyone matters