Building Civic Health, Building Community

Episode 74, 49 min listen

In this episode, we'll dig into the idea of civic health--what it is, how you can measure it, and what North Carolina has learned from measuring their state's civic health. Along the way, we'll also discover an approach to create a breakthrough on issues that divide us by using a tool called deliberative dialog, and we'll learn how North Carolina is developing their next generation of citizens and civic leaders.

AUDIO PLAYER

You can access this episode wherever you listen to podcasts via our pod.link.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Check out the NC Civic Health Index Report.

Learn more about Leslie's organization, NC Campus Engagement.

Learn about the organization that Leslie and her team worked with to create their report, the National Conference on Citizenship, and check out your state's report.

Check out some of the organizations that Leslie mentioned during our discussion:

As always, if you haven't already, check out Citizen University, a great resource for all things related to building civic culture.

LESLIE GARVIN'S BIO

Leslie Garvin is the Executive Director of North Carolina Campus Engagement a collaborative network of 40 colleges and universities committed to preparing students for civic and social responsibility, partnering with communities for positive change, and strengthening democracy. She is a passionate civic builder and bridger and leader in promoting dialogue and public deliberation. Leslie serves on the Board of Directors of the National Issues Forum and You Can Vote. She serves on the National Advisory Committee of the Carnegie Community Engagement Elective Classification and the Advisory Board of guides.vote. She is a member of the Commission on the Future of NC Elections and the NC Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service and serves as the North Carolina State Rep for the Braver Angels Braver Network. Leslie received her master’s degree in social work from Washington University in St. Louis.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

-Introduction

Ame Sanders 00:11

This is the State of Inclusion podcast where we explore topics at the intersection of equity, inclusion, and community. In each episode, we meet people who are changing their communities for the better, and we discover actions that each of us can take to improve our own communities. I'm Ame Sanders. Welcome.

So, in our last episode, we heard from Michael Cooper about his commitment to building community and civic engagement in Raleigh, North Carolina. Michael talked about North Carolina's recent civic health index report. And in this episode, we're going to dig into the idea of civic health--what it is, how you can measure it, and what North Carolina learned from their report. Along the way, we'll also discover an approach to breakthrough on issues that divide us through a tool called deliberative dialog, and we'll learn how North Carolina is purposely developing the next generation of citizens and civic leaders.

So today, we are happy to welcome Leslie Garvin. Leslie is the executive director of North Carolina Campus Engagement, a collaborative network of 40 colleges and universities committed to strengthening democracy. But most importantly for our discussion today, Leslie is a community builder working at the intersection of community, democracy, and dialog. Leslie, thanks so much for joining me today.

Leslie Garvin 01:47

Thank you so much for having me.

-What does community mean to you?

Ame Sanders 01:49

So, maybe a good place to start is just by asking you, what does community mean to you and how do you think about community building?

Leslie Garvin 01:59

Well, so generally, I think of community as those places and spaces where you find belonging and connection. So, I think that that can be on the identity level, affinity, interests and hobbies, but I've committed my life's work--which is interesting to think about, as I look back--to the idea that the real sphere of influence, the real unit of change, needs to be geographically defined. That's the way I've done my work, meaning on the neighborhood level, you know, sort of a broader community, a city. Then, of course, my work now has landed on state level. But I genuinely believe that this work has to be place-based. It has to be contextualized. That there are different norms and habits and cultural norms and histories that are best served in terms of community building when we define community as something geographic.

So, when I think about community building, I really think it's sort of micro and macro, right? So, I think there's that every day ways that I commit myself, or we commit ourselves, to living and acting towards others justly, with kindness, with generosity. So, you know, I follow my faith for the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself. So for me, that's those everyday actions and choices that we make. Right? I'm tending my own lawn. If a neighbor's sick, I'm bringing in their trash bins. You know, those small things.

My neighbor recently brought us an almond torte for the holidays. Just those sort of everyday kindnesses, I think, is how you start to build community. Then, of course, I think it extends to volunteering and lending your gifts and joining and celebrating place-based arts groups and festivals and just all those sorts of things. Then I think it's the broader commitments that we make in terms of justice. Whether that's how we vote, whether that's how we spend our money, whether that's the issues and areas of need that we make a commitment to try to address. Then I think whatever our life's work that I think we need to see that also as community building. No matter where you are, what you're doing, you know, we talk to students a lot about this identity of citizen is everywhere and at all times. So, you're even carrying that into the workplace.

I don't care if you're an HVAC person or a doctor, right? That at all times, you know, thinking about the community and your responsibility to others. I was recently at the Harwood Institute. I don't know if you know the work of Rich Harwood, and it was so interesting because the bags that they handed out said, "Am I turned outward today?" When I saw it, I thought, what an interesting framing. Of course, they gave it more context. It really is this notion of looking at others and looking out for the welfare of others, and thinking and acting justly. I just thought it was interesting. I think it's a different way to move ourselves out of sort of selfishness and to really open our eyes to the reality of others.

Ame Sanders 05:37

So, you talk about community as a sense of place and belonging and those around us. I love that example that you just gave about, are we turned outward and are we considering others? How did you choose this path? What brought you to this focus of community and this work?

-What brought you to this work?

Leslie Garvin 05:58

Yeah, I almost feel as if I didn't have an option. So, I grew up in a small town. It's called Jefferson Township. Population 7,000 outside of Dayton, Ohio. I came from a working class family, and my father grew up in Dayton, and so it was a dream of his to move out to Jefferson and get some land. So, we lived on five acres. We had a neighbor who had chickens and pigs. The neighbor on the other side had horses and cows. So, this is the kind of neighborhood I grew up in where you plow each other's in the snow. You share from the garden. Gwen across the street, Mr. Schroll's daughter, had polio and had been homeschooled her whole life. So, in the summers, I hung out with her and played games on the porch. She was obviously a lot older than me. My next door neighbor was my caregiver after school because I was a latch key kid. She sewed my outfits.

And so all of that is to say, all I knew growing up was that we're responsible for each other and at all times, and if there's a need, you feel it, and you don't think about it. That same principle was being lived out in my faith community. We were very active in our church, and the same principles, right? Caring for the sick and shut in, and caring for whatever needs there were, and coming to folks' rescue. I remember my friend and I were biking and fell off, and our neighbor took care of us and took us back home. Bandaged us up and sent us back home. So, to me that feeling of safety, of love, I knew that I had dignity and worth because of the way that folks treated me, and then my school reflected the same thing. So, one of my mom's best friends was my elementary school principal, and she also went to my church. So, in our schools, we were also loved and nurtured and talked about pride and all sorts of other things.

Ame Sanders 08:09

Looking back at what motivates us to do this work is so important to understand because it colors everything, and that's a really powerful story of how you ended up doing the work that you're doing. I will also say I found some of the things you described very touching because they echo back to my childhood as well of how neighborhoods existed and neighbors interacted with one another. So thank you for sharing that.

So, one of the reasons that I wanted to talk with you was I interviewed recently Michael Cooper of Raleigh, and he talked about Civic Saturday Raleigh. I came across this report that you presented as part of that, and I think it's a really good continuation of this conversation we're just having. So, my understanding is you presented a report that helps assess North Carolina's civic health. Let's start with that report. What is civic health in this context that we're going to talk about? How do you go about measuring something like that?

-What is civic health and how do you measure it?

Leslie Garvin 9:12

Yeah, so it is a very big concept, and of course we're only measuring a subset of indicators for how to do that. But the way we talk about civic health is, it's the way that we engage with one another, with our communities, with our institutions, and in politics. So, it's the idea that civic participation is a cornerstone of democracy. And so strong civic health is vital to healthy functioning systems and thriving communities. So, what we draw the information from is the quantitative items on the US Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, Volunteer and Civic Engagement supplement. So, the data we're specifically using was from the 2021 and then the voting and registration supplement that was that was sent in 2022. But I should say this is not unique to North Carolina.

So, there's an organization called the National Conference on Citizenship, and they are actually the folks who get the data for states that are interested in measuring their civic health. I believe there are over 30 states that, over time, have done so. So in fact, I have presented at multiple venues this year because for the first time, Arkansas released their civic health index, and Alabama released, I think it was their second, and Georgia released their third. Previously, there hadn't been very many in the South.

So, we are now finding ways to look at the data within our regional context, because the reality is, we fall lowest on most of the indicators and the ranking compared to other states. So, we have a lot of curiosity about that, but that's in a nutshell--that was a lot--about the civic health index and how we got here and what it measures. It's important for me to say that we had six partners for this, and they're all education-based partners. So, we have the Program for Public Discourse at UNC Chapel Hill, the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University, Generation Nation, which is our K-12 civic education organization, Carolina Public Humanities, also at UNC Chapel Hill and Duke Civic Engagement. The reason you need so many partners is because there is a cost involved with publishing a civic health index.

So, you pull together the funds, and you create and you write it. So, you write it. Your state network or your state committee writes it, and it looks different in every state, the folks that it brings to the table. In fact, I was maybe the only strictly, sort of almost exclusively higher ed committee, where it's mostly partners in that area. So, then you come together and look at the data you receive, and you write your report. Then they format it and publish it for you.

Ame Sanders 12:26

So, just to recap what I heard you say. So first, the report that you did was not the first North Carolina version of this. So, you guys have some history with this, which is great, because it lets you see that evolution over time. We'll talk about that in a minute. The things that you talked about measuring are like social connectedness, community engagement, political action, and participation. So, those three main areas are attributed back to this report to be able to do that.

It's survey-based, and you have both local partners or statewide partners that helped you do this, but also this national organization that you relied on for the resources to actually gather the data, execute, and publish the report. So, that kind of gives a good snapshot or a little bit of a roadmap if there's a community out there that wants to follow in your footsteps or discover what's happening in their state or their community, and maybe see if this is applicable to them. What made you decide to do this report now, and who did you see this report being for?

-Why measure civic health?

Leslie Garvin 13:40

Yes, so thank you for mentioning that we've done several over time. So, that 2003 was our first. Then we did it in 2010 using this same data set, right? So again, 2003 was a unique framework for it. Then we did one in 2015. We, my organization, NC Campus Engagement, was at the table for the 2010. The 2015 was actually the lead was taken exclusively by one organization who does a lot of great community engagement work throughout our state. So, they specifically wanted to use civic health to tie into the need for more economic development and more support. So, I realized that we hadn't done one in several years. That was number one.

Number two, I was curious about the possibility that COVID would have an impact on civic health in the positive direction because I was aware that folks were doing some really interesting things, as well as negative knowing that there will be less access or opportunity to do some of those things. So also, because COVID gave us a pause where we didn't have quite as many opportunities to do other work, it just felt like it was the right time. It would be ideal to do it every five years so we could just see how things had shifted. But I would say, probably the main reason is I had recently been writing quite a few grants, and in collecting the data to make the case for the need for more community and civic engagement, I became aware of just how much our state has changed in the last decade demographically. We are, first of all, we continue to be one of the top cities where folks are coming for migrating to. That's number one. Number two. We are one of the states that has the most rapidly growing population from Central South America, Mexico. I was also interested in the possibilities of measuring that.

Now I should tell you, in terms of the survey returns, that we were only able to pull out demographic data from white folks and Black folks. We didn't have enough for the other, which also raises lots of questions in terms of people feeling comfortable answering different questions, who would be at the table in terms of taking the Census, and just comfortable with the Census, and all those sorts of things. So, that's a whole other area to explore and think about. But yes, so there were a lot of things bubbling around, and I thought this feels like the time when we need to do another one. So, I pulled together some partners.

Ame Sanders 16:28

So, first you're saying that you feel, based on the work you've done with it and the research that you've done, that doing this periodically on a regular basis would be helpful for a locale to do. So, maybe every five years. It's not something that changes on a dime, but it is something that over a long period of time, you could get a picture of the change. The other thing that you mentioned the state undergoing a lot of growth and change, and then also the context of COVID. So, we all know that in our community building and in our community lives, there are moments in communities where we experience change or significant either fractures or positive occurrences as well, and that's also a good time to sort of take note. But realizing that the data that you use has a distinctive lag to it, as you described, because it's based on Census data, so it has a particular time lag that we have to recognize and deal with in our thinking.

Talk about the mechanics of it. So the partners, local partners, national partners, base of data that we use, seeing a trend over time, but over a very long period of time, not a short period of time, that there is a cost to it, so you need some support in doing that. I guess one of the questions I want to ask you now is, what the heck did you learn? What did you find out about North Carolina? What did it tell you?

-What did you learn?

Leslie Garvin 17:55

Yeah. I would say the main takeaway is that our strength is, and has always been, social connectedness. I think that that tracks with even our own vision of ourselves in terms of southern hospitality and some other things. But social connectedness is absolutely where our strength is. Our weakness or our growth opportunity is political action and participation, which raises so many questions in a battleground state. When we think about where we perform well, it's spending time with our family and friends. It's talking, spending, and collaborating with our neighbors, right? So, this neighborliness. Doing favors for our neighbors, participating in groups, and then the frequency of volunteering.

Frequency, right? So, once a person volunteers here in North Carolina--and that's a key one of our community engagement indicators--they are going to stick with. That doesn't mean we have a lot of volunteering. It does that our frequency of volunteering is strong. So, those are the areas where we perform well. That's a fairly short list when you think of 17 indicators. So, there are six where we perform well. when we say, perform well, I give a caveat every time of saying comparatively. So, the reality when we look at the numbers, particularly the rankings, and we look at it across all the states. The truth is, is that civic health is not very strong in our country. We're talking about places where we are ranked 10th or 15th in the nation when only 20% of folks say they do this thing. So, that's just generally something that we often reckon with.

Now, a second caveat that's unique to North Carolina is we disregard the voter registration and voting supplement information. That is because we perform so much better when it comes to voting and we believe that that could be connected to the fact that we are a battleground state. So, we actually vote a lot better than what folks report themselves voting, which raises a lot of questions as well. So, you go to the election commission to get the data? Yes, we go directly to our board of elections, our state board of elections to know and that's what we include in our report. Although I should say, while I'm on this thread of voting, and I'll get to that in a few moments, that there are demographic differences, demographic gaps that are very persistent in our state when it comes to civic health and one of the interesting ones is related to voting. I can come back to that.

So, where do we need to grow? We absolutely need to do better with our political action and participation. So, we know that we vote. We are less likely to attend public meetings, highly unlikely to engage with local public officials, to the point that we are 50th in the nation when it comes to engaging with local public officials. We are less likely when it comes to consuming news. We are 46th when it comes to discussing political, social, and societal issues with others or online. We are not likely to donate to political organizations. We definitely need to grow in the area of donating to charitable or religious organizations, which is our biggest caveat. That particular indicator for us, and I'm grateful that my friends in the South from Arkansas and Georgia have been able to dig a little more deeply into the data. It appears that in some ways, there are regional framings in terms of language and the way that something is presented that are effective, and that is one of them.

When we dig more deeply into that, knowing that we are in the Bible Belt and we are ranked so low when it comes to donating to charitable religious organizations, what we find is the language of tithing is how many people think of how they give to their religious organization. But when you say to them, "Are you donating to a religious organization?" it's likely they're thinking of a nonprofit like Samaritan's Purse or some sort of other entity. So again, we're left with so many questions that there are some of them just stand out to us and we go, "How is that possible?" And we realize that it's possible because a misunderstanding. Because we are obviously including in that indicator, or wanting folks to think also about how they give tithing and how they give to their faith community. Or alms in some religions.

Ame Sanders 22:41

First, I'm going to include a link to the report so people can go and look at the report, and also to the national organization, so they can link back to what may be happening in their own state as well. So, I think that'll give people a path to go and look at some of the examples of this. I love the discussion that we just had, the point you just made about the local language and the context, because it harkens back to what you said at the very beginning, which is about the frame of change being local, neighborhood, city, community, geographically centered. And that there are cultural norms, and as you just described, cultural language that we use to describe things that can often lead us to misinterpret or maybe not get the complete picture of what we want or need to see. This report is a statewide report. You didn't tell me exactly who you saw as customers for this report, and also this idea of so, what does that mean for a local community? What do you expect people to do with this or about this?

-How will it be used?

Leslie Garvin 23:50

Yeah, I think the audience is obviously those of us who consider ourselves part of the community and civic engagement field, right? So, that's everyone from the K-12 folks doing civic education to those of us doing it in higher education, those folks doing on the ground, just to give us a better understanding of where the areas are. But the ideal would be, and has always been, that our public officials, that our community leaders, and others would really take a look at this and make a decision about ways that they could impact these outcomes on the ground--in their own context and what would work for them.

I remember years ago when California was looking at their reports around volunteerism, and they actually appointed a secretary-level position to work on that with real intentionality. We in North Carolina do have our Commission on Volunteerism that does great work specifically, focused on national service and AmeriCorps and those sorts of things. But it has always been the dream that our state, our leaders, others, even the corporate community, the business community--So, when we did our launch in August, we invited every sector that we could think of. Because we really think that every sector is the audience, right? Folks in education, because we used to have a real emphasis on service learning in our state, and that has been pretty much eliminated, or has declined significantly. So, we just think that everybody should be at the table for this. You know, Chamber of Commerce. We think that everybody has a role to play, particularly since we know the linkages, right? There's really no question anymore about the linkages between a healthy, civic-minded community and a community that has strong civic health, right? It's tied to economics, right? We know businesses want to relocate to places where this sort of culture is, where people care about their neighbors, or where people are active in the community.

We know it's tied to public health, right? There's so much evidence of the isolation of seniors and others, and how volunteering alone can change some of that delinquency. There are ties to teen pregnancy that young folks– young ladies, in particular--who volunteer have, are less likely to have that. Then there's the crime. We know that communities with the stronger civic health have less violent crime in particular. So, I think the case can be made that the audience is everyone. I think we all have a role to play in ensuring that our civic health is strong in North Carolina.

Ame Sanders 26:47

What have you seen happen in North Carolina over time? Is your civic health better or worse?

-Civic health over time - is it better or worse?

Leslie Garvin 26:54

Yeah. I wish I could say it was a lot better. When we did this in 2015, some of the indicators had improved. For example, volunteering had gone up about 3%. Well, that went down about 3%, right? So we kind of level set there. We gained 12 points when it came to working with our neighbors to do something positive. So again, it was that COVID. I think that we all saw that on TV, and all the great stories, and on the internet, where folks you know came together in their neighborhoods to support each other.

Ame Sanders 27:31

You'll probably see a similar bump with the hurricane in Western North Carolina. It's a horrible tragedy, but it has brought neighbors together in a way that was, for me, at least almost unimaginable. I have to reflect on those moments of change or inflection that can create a spark or something.

Leslie Garvin 27:50

Right. And the question of, "How can you build on that?" So, you're left with the idea of, "How do you keep the momentum going?" I would say for the most part, that we have stayed pretty steady. We went down in a few places. Overall, we've pretty much averaged. So, goes back to actually what you just said a few minutes ago. And I think the question becomes, "When we do this again, who has to be at the table in order to truly take action on this?" It certainly has impacted the work that I do with colleges and universities, and continues to. I use it to say, "These are some of the gaps. This is what we need to strengthen. We need to do this." I'm certain that there are organizations and others that have done that.

But in terms of full scale statewide impact, or local impact, there's so much more that would have to happen than just having the data. So for example, Arkansas has started a new initiative called Civic Arkansas, because at the table, they had a local funder. They had a regional funder that was part of their…from the beginning, they were at the table. So, they funded them to dig more into all of this. So, they've been doing listening tours around the state--rural, urban, getting feedback. You know, "Does this show up for you? Why do you think this is? What are some of the things that could happen? What are the things you're seeing and that could be strengthened?" That sort of thing. That would be the ideal that we could really dig into the context and look at that.

Does it look the same on the coast as it does in the mountains? Does it look the same in rural areas? Urban? Is Charlotte the same as Robeson County? So clearly, there needs to be a lot more done with it in order to really ensure that that we see a change and to set some very intentional goals around it. It would be great if we could set some statewide goals for how we could move things forward. So, that is our next goal, is to really continue. I've been sharing it and wherever I can, wherever I can get an audience. I recently shared it with 4H, so that they can think about it in the context of working with the youth that they work with, and particularly since they're heavily in rural areas.

What I didn't share, though, is those demographic gaps, and those have been consistent over time as well. So, that is absolutely something that we need to figure out how to intervene in those areas. So, for example, participation by white North Carolinians is higher than Black North Carolinians on every measure except one. And I use white and Black because that's the language in the Census. The one where the Black respondents said that they do this more is attending a public meeting. So, there's so much curiosity around that in terms of our history of the civil rights movement and other things in North Carolina. Younger people, which is where my interest is, participate less than North Carolinians on every measure. This is age 16 to 29, and that has been consistent over time. They outrank other folks in spending time with their family and friends, which makes sense. Lower income North Carolinians, so that making 35k and below report less participation on every measure except voting and voter registration, which is really a curious finding. Then rural North Carolinians report less participation than urban and suburban on every measure except spending time with family and friends.

So, there are questions about access. There are questions about the infrastructure in place that would allow that. The distance that folks live. I mean, when we see the demographic data that really starts to open our eyes around what interventions would need to happen and what we need to understand better to be effective, and what voices have to be at the table for us to move the needle on this.

Ame Sanders 32:06

So, I love that and I'm going to take away a few things, if I can. One is when you structure, if you want to do this structure, it so that you can think about your next steps as well. So, not just the measurement, but also the how do you spread the information and communicate the information? Then, who has to be at the table to actually take action, and how do you continue to learn about the very local, local interpretations of the data that you surface? Because you will find learnings that will then raise more questions that you will need further insights. So, it's good advice to think before you start, think about action, and about further learning, and that those things will serve you well if you set up your original structure that way, and also see it as something that happens over time.

But I find this really the subject to be so relevant and so important right now, as we think about where we find ourselves, where we find our communities. Your examples of all of the value that comes from building community and civic health is so important. So, thank you for that, and thanks for the insight on that report and what you've learned about North Carolina civic health. That has been a great discussion, but I have two more things that I want to talk about with you. We don't have a lot of time for them, but I want to get into them. One is that you are on the board of the National Issues Forum. So, maybe you can just tell us a little bit about the work of the National Issues Forum, because I found that subject to be so fascinating.

-National Issues Forum Institute

Leslie Garvin 33:48

Yeah, so National Issues Forum Institute. So I call it NIFI, and the way that we live it out is through national Issues Forums, but it's the institute is. So, I'll refer to it as NIFI. So, it was founded 40 years ago when there was a group of folks who felt like there was a distance between public officials and citizens, right? Citizens didn't really understand how they were making decisions. There was not a mechanism for citizens to make decisions to help inform those folks. So, they called it like the National Consortium for Public Policy Education. So, out of them forming NIFI, they created this framework which are National Issues Forums, deliberative forums. And the method is deliberation.

So, the idea is public deliberation convenes citizens so that they can share views on issues and wrestle with the downsides and the trade-offs, but that the issues need to be framed around the things we hold most dearly: our values. So, the way that the model works is there are issue guides on different topics, and I think we're up to about 100. So, everything from community policing to free speech in higher education to end of life decisions, abortion, and on. There's even one on driverless vehicles. So, the hope is that that folks will be able to have a deeper understanding of the issue, and especially the tensions, right? I think we live in a time when we don't think about nuance and tension and tradeoffs, where we're being everything's one side or the other. So, it's just been a powerful experience for me to be part of.

But the model itself, there's an issue guide. It typically provides three, usually three, but sometimes four, approaches to the issue, right? So, if we're talking about immigration, it will give three different proposals for what we could do. You know, enforce the current laws in the book. Another option would be more welcoming and expansive, and think more differently. And so there's typically three, and the discussion starts with folks coming to the table and giving their personal stake, right? So why is this issue important to me? Why do I care about that? So, that we can humanize each other before we even begin to deliberate. Then we actually take each proposal of the three or the four, and we weigh it. So, we talk about it. What would be the benefits of this? What would be the costs or consequences? What are the tensions and conflicts? What would be the tradeoffs? What is most valuable to us? Then we deliberate around it.

The goal, ultimately, is that we could see where there was common ground for action. Were there any places where we saw that we were moving closer towards each other? So, maybe we all fundamentally agree that we want to be a place where everyone feels valued, but we also care about security. So, how do we do both of those? So, the forum is designed that folks for about an hour and a half, sometimes two hours, are having these conversations. But the hope is that based off of who created the forum, who invited it, that folks could continue to take action on that issue. That it is something actually relevant to that community or to that context, so that this gave them a framework.

So, for example, I've got a friend down in Jacksonville, Florida who leads community-based forms all the time. So, they were having some tension, as many communities did around their Confederate monuments, particularly some that are in a local park. The framing is not trying to be provocative. It’s really asking the question. So, they framed their forums and they did 16 forums in different neighborhoods, in different places around memory. How do we memorialize history in our city? Out of that, they came up with the acknowledgement that our history is broader than what's being shown. So then, how do we get other voices to the table? Are there other monuments? Are there other stories to be told? Are there other things? Does it start there? No. We need to look at our curriculum and think about whose voices are included in that.

So, they've really come up with some great proposals for action, and started to take action on that. So, that's the ultimate goal. And the ultimate goal is that you're very intentional about who's in the room, so that just as we talked about the civic health index, the right people are there who were impacted by the issue, or who can impact the issue, all the stakeholders in order to then take action on it.

Ame Sanders 38:58

So, I love the idea of those forums, and I have really appreciated learning about the work of NIFI. Thank you for unpacking that for us in terms of how those forums can go and giving us an example in Jacksonville. What I really like about this approach is it's not really aimed to move people from one place to the other, or change your opinions, or to create necessarily painful dialog for people, but to really help people explore the nuances that can exist in any of these issues that are particularly thorny. And also to do that in a somewhat structured way and safe way, so that people can feel confident that regardless of what positions they hold on that or what beliefs they hold on, that there is space for them to express their personal beliefs and that communities do have shared values around which you can find common ground in some ways to move forward. So, I really love the work of NIFI and these forums.

I have to say, I had a personal reason for wanting to ask you about that, because I hope in Greenville, in my hometown, we'll be able to do some of these in the next year or two, because I think we have a lot of opportunity to have meaningful conversation and dialog around a lot of different subjects. So, thank you for that.

Then, if we have time, I have one more question for you, which is about your day job (which you've alluded to a little bit), is that you're the executive director of North Carolina Campus Engagement. You help prepare North Carolina students for civic and social responsibility. So, we know that that can continue on from the discussion we had about civic health and all that. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about that, and if you can, just kind of give us a sense of North Carolina's young people. What we have in your state at least to look forward to, and how we can think about the youth in our own communities?

-Preparing Youth for Civic Engagement

Leslie Garvin 41:12

So I'll quickly say that what we believe--so our organization has been around since 1994 --and in the early days, it was really about trying to help higher education institutions embrace their public purposes. Fundamentally, that's the foundation of our mission. How to live that out has evolved for us. In the beginning, it was really about service learning, community service, community-based research, right? So, how do we take the knowledge, the resources, the human capital, and improve and support our communities, while also improving learning? Right? We know that young folks when they can do the learning, right? Like, if I'm studying something and for instance, you know biology, well, let's go test the water and then find out if there's a lead. So, service learning was really the framework that we used. It became clear to us, and has been over time, that that is not enough to shift civic health to improve our democracy specifically.

So, what do students need? What skills, habits, and knowledge would they need to do that? So, for us, our logic model includes everything from service--we run an AmeriCorps program, a hunger corps and an after school corps, we promote service through all of our work, including the MLK Day of Service, where we give grants and support. The idea of civic leadership. So, we've hosted our student conference that was actually our first event in 1994, and we continue that, but we realized that leadership is not just coming to a conference and learning some skills. It's actually practicing them. So, we have public problem-solving competitions. One is called a Community Change Collegiate Challenge and one is called Redesigning Democracy. Student teams come together around a theme: hunger, polarization, the role of institutions, and polarization, trust in elections, and fairness in elections. It's an immersive experience where they hear from experts, they engage in dialogue, and then they go off and come up in just one day with proposals for how you could take action on these things. Because we want them to see themselves as civic actors, right? They have a role in all of this.

Then we realized--and that predated even our public solving competition--that young folks, one of the skills you need to strengthen democracy is deliberation. So, that's why we train folks successively in the deliberative model and then dialogue. So, we've introduced our network of 40 campuses and their students and faculty and staff to about 14 different dialogue methods. Everything from living room conversations to braver discussions, which is a model developed by Braver Angels in our state, because we believe you have to be able to know how to talk across difference, and you know how to clearly frame your position and your arguments. So, we do civil dialogue, which is a framework for that.

Then the deliberation, you know, how do we actually deliberate with others to find common ground? Now, what's clear to us is what we're trying to do is civic identity formation. So, K-12 schools do civic education, right? Learning about the branches of government, learning about the history of our country and our democracy, but the question of, how do I see myself as a citizen? How do I take on that identity? We've got so many identities, but who helps form that? So, that's really our work now.

So, we have a camp now called Citizen Redefined. We learned this curriculum from Citizen University. They were doing this in K-12 schools, and we wanted to bring it to higher education. So, it's a week-long camp, and students are there thinking about everything from the American creeds and what they mean? How do we live them out? Where are they not fully realized? They look at symbols, the flag, you know. They think about power. All sorts of things. Then at the end, just as when you have a naturalization ceremony to become an American citizen, we have a commitment ceremony, where they make a commitment to what I now will do as a citizen.

Then, of course, our foundation of all this that we've been doing for decades is voter engagement. So, we have tried to lead that movement in our state for a long time. So, that's everything from we help facilitate the voter coalition. This is all the folks that want to mobilize college students. So, we meet monthly to make sure that we are aligned. We run the annual Voter Summit, where we bring students from all our campuses across the state to prepare their campus and the student leaders themselves, that are going to do the work on the campus, grants, all of that. So, sort of our logic model at this point is to think about what are all those different branches of habits, knowledge, skills that one would need to know to become a fully formed citizen. So, yeah, that's our work.

So, when I think about young folks, you know, you'll hear this from anybody that works with youth, but being invited into the future of this country to say, "This is yours. This is yours. You get to shape it." We emphasize, we the people like crazy, right? This was a vision, and then it's not yet there. It's a becoming thing. But you're on that same timeline. You're part of this timeline and you have to step into this role, and so that's--when you invite them in, they take in and they run. The reality is they don't have a lot of places to do that, particularly in communities, right? They're not necessarily on the table at the City Council. They're not necessarily part of different community groups and organizations, and so we are trying to prepare them for that, to take on those roles, and to recognize that right now, in this moment, that they are a citizen.

For us, citizen is small c. It's not a legal designation. It's everything we talked about before, and that is how we live in community and in respect, respecting the dignity and create belonging in the places and spaces where we live.

Ame Sanders 47:41

Leslie, thank you so much for sharing about your work. I feel like in this interview, I've gotten three interviews in one, and I just want to thank you so much for joining us and sharing your wisdom and insights with us.

Leslie Garvin 47:54

Thank you so much for having me.

-Conclusion

Ame Sanders 47:59

In this time of political polarization, and the othering that comes along with it, Leslie reminds us that we build community first on the personal level, through those small, everyday kindnesses that we do for one another, for our neighbors.

But, that it's also on us as leaders to step back from time to time and try to understand as best we can the bigger picture for the place we call home, to allow us to recognize and celebrate our community strengths, the magic that's part of the place we love.

Then to get to work shoring up the areas that need our attention. In that spirit, we can all ask ourselves, "What everyday kindness will I do today to build community? What small step will I take toward the bigger picture of building the kind of community where everyone can find belonging and connection?"

This has been the State of Inclusion podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, the best compliment for our work is your willingness to share the podcast or discuss these ideas with others. If you'd like to hear more about the practice of building an inclusive and equitable community, head over to theinclusivecommunity.com and sign up for our newsletter. Also, feel free to leave us a review or reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening and join us again next time you.

CONTRIBUTORS

Guest: Leslie Garvin

Host: Ame Sanders

Social Media and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson

Podcast Coordinator: Emma Winiski

Sound: Uros Nikolic