Month: March 2016

Off to a Great Start!

Posted on by Robert Parker

By Eric MonganCreswell

Creswell, OR – On a crisp Monday evening in Creswell City Hall a small group of strangers gathered together with the charge of establishing the vision for the City of Creswell’s economic development. While some of us had met before and spoken to each in other times and places we gathered with the hope of finding common ground and creating an environment that encouraged free and open expression of ideas and feelings. We were there to talk about the people of Creswell and even more than that we wanted to give the residents of Creswell a voice. A voice that would speak to the desires of the community in order to ask and answer the questions: What does being ‘open for business’ mean? What does it look like? How do we follow-up with the community on these questions? What does community engagement look like in Creswell?Historic Society

First meetings can be difficult and our CPW team accepted the challenge and sought to make an agenda that would allow for the conversation to begin. We did not want to inundate the project advisory team with numbers and definitions. Don’t get me wrong we were prepared to answer as many of the questions the advisory team asked but we wanted to engage them not bore them with lecture. And from the discussion hat unfolded we were a hit. We saw the challenge and met it head on through proper preparation and remembering that this project is about people. It is about a community of professionals, entrepreneurs, visionaries, dreamers and families. The residents of Creswell have chosen to live there for many different reasons but at the end of the day whatever the reason is it all comes down to the character of Creswell and what it offers its residents.

It can be easy to talk about the negatives in life. What can be better? What do I need? But we took the opportunity to ask the project advisory team about successes and strengths of Creswell. This brought the room to life. There was a feeling of great pride in the community and its potential. Looking through a positive lens creates an experience that supports engagement that will take this idea of an economic vision to the next level of community building and efficiency.

I am just an eager outsider to the City of Creswell and I know that I can learn a lot from the members of this community about what it means to give them an opportunity, a voice and a foundation for their future.  This experience with CPW is just the beginning and it is off to an amazing start.

Eric Mongan

Eric Mongan

Eric is currently working on his post-baccalaureate degree in Public Policy, Planning and Management and will complete this second degree in June 2016. He plans on enrolling in the MCRP program in the fall of 2016. He is a combat veteran with two young children and he plans on staying in Eugene to raise his family. He enjoys reading, fishing, home improvement and taking his children to the park.

Building Relationships in Oregon’s Outback

Posted on by Robert Parker

By Emmie Harcourt

Over the last five months, I’ve found myself in a number of unexpected situations as I adjusted to life in Oregon’s Outback. I’ve woken up early to help my landlord feed his cows only to discover that this entails filling the back of a pickup truck with hay, putting the truck in first gear, and everyone piling out, driver included. I’ve found myself as a visitor at a men’s prison, where I spent the afternoon learning about a garden program for inmates and ate my first prison meal. I’ve attended the weekly bingo game at the local senior center, handed out cans of green beans for Thanksgiving, and interviewed produce stand owners who would look more at home at a motorcycle rally. All of these things have been part of conducting a Community Food Assessment, or CFA, for Lake County, located in the hay and cattle country of the high desert. The CFA is a grassroots, participatory research process that focuses on both the current assets and challenges of a local food system with the hopes of informing future projects aimed at improving it.Harcourt

This has taken the form of community meetings, interviews, surveys, and informal conversations over the first half of my term of service, and I am sure the process will continue to change over the course of the second. Overall, it rests on the premise that a community knows what will and won’t work for it, and my role is largely to listen to those community ideas (and complaints) and create connections between existing groups.

I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on this process recently. Yesterday, while interviewing an employee at the local senior center, I stayed to join her for one of the community meals offered at the center three times a week. As we talked about issues affecting senior nutrition and food security, we also started to talk about the process of working with the community in our respective roles. She said something that I have also found to be very true so far, which is that relationships are the most important part of doing this kind of work. She told me that she often has to speak with someone five to six times before they are willing to really work with her, and I have likewise found that I have had to establish myself as a part of the community before being able to accomplish many of the tasks that I’ve set out to do. While this process can seem frustrating and slow-moving at times, I think that it has been essential for my position, especially in a place where “government official” could be hurled as an insult. So while it may not seem immediately apparent how handing out green beans or attending a bingo game can benefit a local food system, what it does is build the relationships and trust necessary to create a truly community-based process, which will hopefully lead to a Community Food Assessment that will continue to be useful to Lake County residents after my term of service is complete.

Emmie Harcourt

Emmie received her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Missouri. After obtaining her degree, Emmie worked as a museum interpreter for the Missouri State Museum leading educational tours and researching and designing new museum programs for teens. Prior to that, Emmie worked as a research intern for the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona where she conducted qualitative research and compiled reports at two urban farms while maintaining an intern-run garden plot. After her term of service with the RARE Program, Emmie hopes to combine her interests in cultural anthropology and sustainable agriculture while pursuing a master’s degree in applied anthropology, focusing on food system research. She hopes that her time spent serving with Lake Health District will help her to better articulate her particular research interests while gaining more experience with community-based, participatory research methods and community organizing.