During the organizing phase, we emphasize coalition-building, recruitment of diverse dialogue participants, message development, early planning for action and training of facilitators. In this phase, it is crucial to reach out to every sector of the population to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.
Organizing
Tips
 Young people’s involvement and leadership is central to creating sustainable community change. But many community groups run into problems when they try to engage young people in their work. Here, we lay out solutions to some of the most common issues.
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 Images help bring your story to life and you can use them on almost all your promotional materials. If your program is just getting started, you can use stock photos. If you have your own, you can edit them using free tools available online.
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 Animated media offers a break from text and stills. You can create a video from photos you took at an event, or you can use a video camera to take some action shots and interviews of participants. If you’re interested in putting together a video, these tools can help you.
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 A website or blog can help you spread the word about your dialogues, post pictures and stories from your events, and share your success with your community and potential funders. The task of setting up and maintaining a website can seem daunting, but these tools will have you reaching out to your community in no time.
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 While you know volunteers can benefit your program, the task of recruiting them can seem challenging. No doubt, people view their time as a well-guarded, precious resource and it can be hard to give that up. Check out these ten strategies to help you get organized and let people know they're making a difference so you can recruit more volunteers.
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 The most successful community-planning efforts involve residents as partners, from the early planning stage through to implementation.
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 Staying connected with participants and community members can help maintain the momentum of your program and should be part of your communications plan. Explore six ways to share information, along with examples of how other dialogue to change programs are using these communication tools.
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 During the 2012 election season, a New York Times article, “Academic ‘Dream Team’ Helped Obama’s Effort,” outlined several tactics that a team of social scientists used to help President Obama during his campaign. Whether or not your preferred candidate won the election, there are many techniques that we can use in organizing dialogue-to-change programs.
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Resources
 Hands on guide for youth and adults, who are dedicated to finding ways for all kinds of people to engage in dialogue and problem solving on critical social and political issues.
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 Use these worksheets to help your group design a strategy for reaching out and getting new volunteers and participants.
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 This handout will help you understand the importance of talking points and give you four simple steps for developing your own.
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 This activity will help groups gain an understanding of different ways change can happen, and in particular how Everyday Democracy's dialogue process differs from other ways of creating change in a community.
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Young people’s involvement and leadership is central to creating sustainable community change. But many community groups run into problems when they try to engage young people in their work. Here, we lay out solutions to some of the most common issues.
Dialogue to Change
Our ultimate goal is to create positive community change that includes everyone, and we believe that our tools, advice, and resources will help foster that kind of change. Whether you’re grappling with a divisive community issue, or simply want to include residents’ voices in city government, the dialogue to change program can help community members take action and make their voice heard.