Wrapping Things Up

What a difference a semester makes. The whole Rules of Engagement process was a learn as you go kind of class. It appeared that we learned what doesn't work last semester and what does work this semester. I and hopefully everyone else felt more involved in the process this semester. There are still many kinks that need to be worked out, but with many discussions and with a lot of help from Harry Crissy this class is definitely moving in the right direction. There is potential for student participation in areas of need such as the towns we participated with. I didn't fully believe at the beginning that we could contribute to the community development process, but it appeared a lot did get accomplished with our assistance. This was an area of study that I knew very little about going in. I would have to say that many of the opinions I had about smaller, rural communities have changed or at least the readings and visits have opened my eyes to deeper investigation of the culture of these communities. That was a large strength of this class in its ability to analyze sensitive topics such as politics and racism in the South, through readings and in viewing it first hand on site visits. I hope this class will continue to be available for future students to take part in, and move toward the objectives that we set out to accomplish.

Final Design Workshop

Prior to the Williston Design Workshop, my only experience with this was the Denmark workshop. The turn out wasn't what I expected. In Denmark we filled 5 tables full of community members, however in Williston we could have filled 1 possibly 2. Though the small turnout, it was good to have the realization that not every workshop will go smoothly and won't always have full support. There were many other events going on in the area, so this may have had something to do with it. The community members that did show up were very informative. The new way of accessing the external and internal problems and strengths proved to be a success. In Denmark we accessed the categories with numbers but no visual connection. In Williston the used of poker chips allowed the community members to visualize how they ranked each category. The community members picked up on the strategy of the exercise and produced strong results and good conversation. It sounded as if there were talks of another attempt at this workshop, yet we won't be there to participate. Hopefully the next attempt will produce more participation with the same quality of results.