ANNOUNCEMENTS
There were a few announcements, probably something about May 4th and the Anti-war protest.
There will be a conference for union members and students at Kent May 31-June 2. I am waiting to get more information about that.
CHANGE will participate in the Back to School Blastoff.
AGENDA
We used this weeks meeting to talk about what we want to do next semester.
The two things we focused on were: What can we do to improve CHANGE and involve others, and what should CHANGE focus on in the coming semester?
*****Note: All ideas and comments are just that. We desire your input and energy. We hope within the first couple meetings of the semester others' ideas will be integrated and implemented. Please help to make CHANGE a strong voice on the Kent State University campus.*****
What can we do to involve others/improve CHANGE?
Ideas were=
*Promote CHANGE
-This can be done through: flyering, tabling, letters to the editors, public activities. We also need to be more aggressive (in a good way), take a more holistic approach in our message, and reconnect with those who used to be involved with CHANGE.
*Campaigns People are interested in
-We look at this more in the second question
*Leadership skills
-CHANGE must work to improve the skills of all people involved in CHANGE so that everyone in the group is empowered to make decisions and take action. Ways to improve leadership skills are: reading, discussing, empowering others, using learned skills in meetings, and being open to others' questions and suggestions.
*Free food
-Places to get food from would be the cafeteria, bringing food ourselves, and offering snacks.
*Decentralized meetings
-We recognize that meetings can be boring and controlled when one person has the ability to speak throughout the entire meeting and for the majority of the meetings. We therefore want to look for ways to have everyone participate. Some thoughts were: have people volunteer their time and ideas, change the facilitator structure possibly to a monthly basis, commit people to different tasks, co-working/mentoring.
**Because CHANGE has decided to use the consensus model as our way of structuring the meetings and making decisions we need all people involved. People who talk too much must filter themselves and people who speak too little must get rid of some of their filters. All people must make sure that everyone is participating a fair amount.
*Social Time
-We thought it would be good if the people in CHANGE could get to know one another outside of meetings. This could be done in an informal setting such as potlucks, where we would emphasis FUN. We also thought we could maybe have social time with other activist groups as a way of networking and getting to know others with the same concerns. Another thought was to begin meetings with some sort of fun activity. There was some fear that this could become goofy and more of a routine than something people enjoyed.
*Strategies
-In order for CHANGE to function with a little more cohesion we thought it would be a good idea to have a strategy. This would be a continuous plan that could connect from week to meek, meeting to meeting. We thought we could use a common approach and possibly have workshops. One strategy to use is the objectives, strategies, and tactics format.
The semi-prioritized list is:
1)Promotion will begin at the back-to-school blastoff. We will have a meeting in August before school starts to get ready for the blastoff and possibly come up with something catchy to draw students to our table. We will send out an email as to when that meeting will be.
2)Leadership skills and decentralization of the meeting could occur before school starts and throughout the semester.
3)Social time could possibly be discussed throughout the meeting.
4)We can discuss CHANGE's strategies at the first meeting of fall semester.
5)Free food- we will see what happens.
*Again I would like to reinforce that your input is needed. We are missing something, and you know what it is. Let us know.*
What should CHANGE focus on?
The list we came up with was:
-sweatshop/globalization
-globalization
-Bosie Cascade
-Local impact=living wage, part time faculty, etc.
-education/outreach it should be reciprocal and should reach outside of the activist community=workers, Kent city, other students
-Connecting to other groups/ solidarity
-Fairtrade coffee
-Sodexho
We certainly do not want this to be the whole list that people chose from nor focus on everything in this list. We need your imput. What are you interested in pertaining to economic justice?
We will talk about this again at the first meeting of the semester.
Other ideas brought up at the meeting were educational flyers about what concerns activists.
Sorry if these notes seem apologetic. I want everyone one to know their thoughts are important. We want you to share with us.
If you have ideas or comments CHANGE's email address is kentchange@yahoo.com
See you all in August!!!
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