Civility project gets underway in Sisters

Speak Your Peace: The Civility Project (SYP), a community-building initiative aimed at improving civil discourse, will be introduced to residents of Sisters Country on January 14-15, in a series of meetings.

With funding from the Ford Family Foundation, SYP national spokesperson Rob Karwath is being brought to Sisters by the local nonprofit, Citizens4Community (C4C). Karwath will introduce the SYP fundamental principles of civility and facilitate discussions about how Sisters might adopt, customize and utilize the principles to enhance community interaction.

"I will be presenting the story and tools of SYP and listening to where people think problems lie," he said in an interview with The Nugget.

Karwath will share stories of how communities, organizations, and businesses across the country have benefitted from adopting SYP.

"Everyone who has used it (SYP) has gotten some good from it. There is no place that it has fallen flat," he shared.

There will be three presentations on Thursday, January 14. Service organizations, hosted by Sisters Kiwanis Club, will meet 7 to 8 a.m. at Aspen Lakes Lodge. The meeting is from 7 am - 8:30 am and the speaker will be during the last half- hour. Anyone wishing to attend please RSVP to Kiwanis program coordinator Jim Horsley at [email protected]

Nonprofit and government organizations, as well as churches, will meet noon to 1:30 p.m. for lunch at the Sisters fire station community hall, 301 S. Elm St., hosted by C4C. RSVP to C4C at 541-549-1482.

Thursday evening, 5 to 7 p.m., C4C will host a free all-community meeting at the fire station community hall. No RSVP necessary.

At each of the Thursday meetings, questionnaires will be available for citizens to complete and then, on Friday, January 15, 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the fire hall, there will be a "Next Steps" meeting, for anyone interested in hearing the results of the questionnaires and helping to plan how and if to proceed with the Civility Project in Sisters. Those unable to attend a Thursday meeting are encouraged to come to the Friday gathering.

A graduate of University of Kansas in journalism with an MBA from University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, Karwath began his journalistic career as a reporter at one of America's leading newspapers, the Chicago Tribune, where he eventually became the business editor, general manager and director of product development. As business editor, he led a team of reporters whose series on the downfall of the Arthur Anderson accounting firm in the Enron scandal was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize.

Karwath's career has involved other print, online, and broadcast journalism jobs in both Chicago and Duluth, MN, until he returned to Duluth in 2011 to establish North Coast Communications, where he serves as president and CEO. His firm helps large and small clients navigate the complex world of communications and messaging.

The Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation, which established the SYP project in 2003 to address difficulties the communities were having in solving difficult challenges, was Karwath's first client and accounts for about half of his business. He serves as their national representative when inquiries regarding SYP are received from across the U.S. and the world.

Karwath, who as a journalist first viewed SYP with skepticism and a mild disinterest, has experienced first-hand the positive impact of the project when bringing together disparate parties with deep-seated differences, as well as those who are in agreement but stuck in their process.

In his experience with SYP, he has observed that breakdowns in process and communications usually come not from dealing with big issues but rather from not observing very simple tenets of civility, which allow everyone involved to feel heard and fairly treated. Often opportunities are missed or suboptimized when the attitude is, "We know what they're going to say before they say it; there's no point in engaging."

When communities or organizations agree to adopt the SYP tenets of civility, or some version of them, they are agreeing to conduct themselves and work on issues, being guided by the overarching concept of "Is this process, communication, or action civil or not civil?"

Karwath summed it up: "The SYP project provides a community of any kind with an intellectually simple, easy-to-understand set of tools.... SYP doesn't provide a single 'aha' moment nor is it a one-time inoculation that is good for life."

Rather, it is a way to create a safe platform for people to respectfully communicate with each other in public meetings and organizational settings, to minimize divisiveness and misunderstanding, and to maximize collaboration and creative problem-solving.

For more information, contact Robyn Holdman 541-549-1482 or the SYP national office www.dsaspeakyourpeace.org.