Lasting change doesn't happen overnight. After your first round of dialogues, you may decide to hold another round to involve more people in the community. You may also want to create a group to help coordinate the implementation of action ideas that came out of the dialogues. Finally, you may be able to institutionalize this dialogue to change process in your workplace, a local nonprofit, or within your local government.
Sustaining Progress
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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 Your community has a story to tell, and video could be the best way to tell it. Video can be more captivating than stills or text. Check out this guide to help you get started on using video to tell your community's story.
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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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 Social media can help support your program’s efforts, and it is possible to have an active community online. However, there are some common pitfalls you need to avoid in order to keep the discussion going.
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Resources
 This is a team building activity for an organizing coalition or action teams to use during their first or second meeting.
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 If you have a message that you want to spread to members in your community, you'll be more effective and reach more people if you have a clear strategy. Use this worksheet to help guide your team in creating a messaging strategy.
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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, Everyday Democracy's Dialogue-to-Change process can help community members take action and make their voice heard.