Our March 23rd dialogue on the Bend, the River, and environmental and cultural featured a great information and insights from Sally Robinson, Eleanor Cooper, Tricia King Mims, and Andy Wood. Sally provided a primer on how to engage the community, focused on the work she, Eleanor, and others did in the 1980s for the Moccasin Bend Task Force. Tricia provided details on the current situation and National Park Partner's vision for what the Bend could be. Andy shared the Tennessee Aquarium’s strategic planning process and how community members would be engaged in it. One of the most powerful statements of the night came from Andy when he noted our current challenge and opportunity as a community. He asked “how do we transform our community, again?” How do we build on the past and our amazing assets to increase appreciation of our natural and cultural assets? How do we not only maintain what we have but improve upon it to create the extraordinary? The general answer to these questions is via community engagement and mobilization. Comprehensive community engagement is a way to overcome fragmentation. Chattanooga isn’t one community, it’s many. We have many community-based organizations seeking to engage people. Narrowly focused engagement efforts can contribute to the fragmentation and cause us to lose sight of the forest by focusing on the trees. How do we get a comprehensive, wholistic vision for our community, one that most everyone can benefit from and buy into? By engagement that focuses on people—community members—rather than causes, that is open to any and all causes. While we don’t have the resources or umbrella organization to take such a comprehensive approach, we can still do the practices. The only way to learn how to engage and mobilize community member is to do it. We can learn only so much by studying what Chattanooga Venture and related initiatives did; we have to actually do what they did. Those practices have value in their own right, beyond the benefits of a broad community vision. They are useful skills. And, we need these abilities to listen to the voice of the community, to hear what people want from—and can contribute to—it. For those reason, we are going to revive one of Venture’s most ingenious programs: The Facilitator Bank. It was (and will be) a group of people who are trained in community engagement, facilitation, and small group processes and are actively available to help community groups establish a vision, set goals, and succeed as community ventures. If you’re interested in joining the Facilitator Bank or know someone who might, please fill out the interest form by clicking here <https://cloud.eduity.net/apps/forms/s/KbHkwnS9TtBcBb5fSNFoKmA8> and mention “Facilitator Bank” as an interest. You can also attend our next regular Study Group meeting on April 7 at noon (click here to get more info and RSVP <https://luma.com/g3m0r4sj>). Our next public dialogue on April 27 will focus on housing supply with CNE. You can register online and find more information at https://luma.com/oo948apo. We are also planning a dialogue on urban design and development, hopefully for early June. More on both of those soon. Beyond that, our plans are to adopt a podcast approach, streaming the dialogues live online with a small in-person audience. And, the Study Group will move online via Venturing.Chattanooga.Digital <https://venturing.chattanooga.digital/>. To get involved with National Park Partners, visit their website, http://nppcha.org/. If you would like to directly connect with Andy about engagement opportunities with the Tennessee Aquarium, shoot me an email. Thanks for your interest in the Chattanooga Venturing Study Group! — Greg Laudeman, Ed.D. Executive Officer and Principal Eduity, LLC www.eduity.net greg@eduity.net 706-271-5521