Lakeland Area Community Meetings

Lakeland Area Community Meeting Group
Open Letter To Refocus Our Energies
November 30, 2008

Dear Community Friends;

            Over the past two years we have been meeting almost monthly in an effort to provide a forum that would bring the Lac du Flambeau community and the communities from around the Lakeland area together to discuss issues of concern. During that time we have had hundreds of people attend our meetings. We have had some really tough meetings, particularly surrounding the lockdown at LUHS, but in the end they have helped us grow as a community. Sometimes to move forward, we need to be ready to take a long, reflective look at the past. In our community, where race relations have been strained for generations, and still relatively unresolved, these meetings have provided a unique forum where everyone has had an equal voice, and everyone has had an opportunity to hear different viewpoints and perspectives.

            Some of the best work we have accomplished includes a community mapping exercise where one night we mapped out all of the resources we could think of that are here to help children and families in need or in crisis. Out of this meeting we agreed that we needed to focus on four core issues that needed attention in our community:
  1. substance abuse
  2. racism
  3. lack of youth connectedness to community
  4. need for improved parenting skills and involvement
            Over the next year we tried to form working subcommittees to work on each specific focus area but seemed to have a hard time focusing our efforts despite some excellent meetings on Underage Drinking, long discussions on racism in our communities, the need for improved parenting skills and lack of parent involvement in our children’s lives and, most recently, an enthusiastic group of LUHS youth who want to build their own place to “hang out”. During this time, a number of substance abuse prevention coalitions have emerged as agents of positive change: The Positive Alternatives Coalition, The LdF Minobimaadiziiwin Coalition, The Oneida County AODA Coalition and the HOPE group.

            I believe we are ready for a real challenge and I’m writing this letter to ask you to join us. The challenge is called a Community Plunge and I think we can activate the four subcommittees to help us plan this event.

            So what’s a Community Plunge? The Plunge is very similar to the setting created at a town hall meeting but a plunge is a full one-day event. This longer time-frame allows local leaders the opportunity to become immersed in the identified problem by traveling around to a variety of locations in the community to become aware of and discuss the issue.  The challenge in hosting a plunge is that it requires a significant investment of both planning time and money-up to 6 months of planning and the money part depends on what we do. Other communities have rented buses and taken their leaders on a tour of various sites where people tell their “stories”. We have all the pieces in place to tell the story of each of the four focus areas we have learned about and discussed the past two years. Now is the time to bring our tribal and community leaders, law enforcement, educators, parents and others who have the authority to create change-to learn about the inter-connected relationship between the four core issues. We have many good ideas about how to help bring positive change, and some great teaching resources in each of the four core areas to get those ideas across.

So here’s what we envision:
  1. We will continue to meet monthly-but our meetings will be on the second Wednesday of every month from 3:30pm-6:00pm at LUHS School so we can engage youth. NEXT MEETING: Wednesday December, 10.
  2. We will have four working subcommittees identified as follows:
    1. Substance abuse: the four prevention coalitions mentioned
    2. Racism: ILI staff, LdF community members, elders, parents, youth
    3. Youth issue: LUHS ILI youth and others they recruit
    4. Parenting skills: ICW representative, young parents, single parents
Each group will work on a plan for a one day plunge-where a large bus or two will bring designated community people around to stop at their subcommittee displays/skits/presentations/activities that help to tell their particular story. All of the stories will, however, be connected so leaders can understand how each affects the other-from a grassroots perspective. We will provide a list of possible solutions to each issue and ask that our visitors take action. This has been extremely powerful in other communities around Wisconsin where they have taken place.
 
Many of us have devoted many, many hours to trying to figure out how we can all come together to affect change that:
  • Promotes cultural understanding, acceptance and awareness;
  • Promotes knowledge, competency and skills;
  • Promotes self-esteem and self-reliance;
  • Promotes increased coping ability;
  • Promotes support systems in families, schools, work places and community environments;
  • Promotes conditions for healthy lifestyles and resistance to physical and psychological illness and disease;
  • Promotes environmental conditions for a healthy community. 
Will you join us in planning and implementing our first Community Plunge? We can’t do it without you!
 
Bob Kovar, Project Director
Intercultural Leadership Initiative
Positive Alternatives Coalition
PO Box 1792
Woodruff, WI 54568
(715) 614-8831
(715)614-8831 (cell)
www.ilileadership.org