Well, it's happened again. I received another of those urgent, handwringing emails from an organization that has a falling membership, a rising median age and pretends it has no idea what they can do to reach people who may want to join.
The Kanawha County group that sent me this we've-fallen-and-we-can't-get-up email polled its few remaining members to see how many of them would be willing to donate money so they could rent a billboard at a cost of $1,000. They couldn't even raise a measly $1,000 from their shrunken membership. And they're now behaving like they have no idea what to do to reach potential new members.
Neither the group nor its leaders have Twitter accounts.
The group doesn't have a Facebook page or group and the leaders make no ention of the group in their Facebook profiles.
They don't turn up in a Google search. And, as I said in a previous post, Google is the new Yellow Pages. In the 80s, if your org or business wasn't in the Yellow Pages, your org or business didn't exist. Today, if your org or business doesn't turn up in a Google search, it doesn't exist.
A few days ago I was in a meeting with about a dozen other people when a name came up and we wanted to find that person's phone number. The older folks in the room scurried for a phone book. The younger folks in the room whipped out their smart phones and searched on Google.
I've discovered that when groups are dying it's usually not because nobody has told them what they have to do and how they have to change in order to reach a new generation. When groups are dying it's usually because they aren't willing to make the changes that would enable them to grow.
But here's a timeless truth: if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting the results you've been getting. If you want a different result, what changes are you willing to make?
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If there were a Neighborhood Watch Catechism this is what I hope it would say:
Q. What Is The Purpose of a Neighborhood Watch?
A. To make restore a sense of community and make neighborhoods safer by creating the conditions for better communication and cooperation between neighbors and law enforcement agencies.
Q. What is the purpose of Neighborhood Watch meetings?
A. To get stakeholders like police and neighbors into the same room where they can forge relationships, increase trust, open candid dialogue and empower Neighborhood Watch members a feeling of empowerment through heightened awareness of what they can do to deter crime and help police catch criminals.
Q. What is the first thing neighborhoods must do to create conditions that lead to reduced crime and that elusive, vanishing sense of community?
A. To identify their neighbors and use every means at their disposal to get them talking to each other, e.g., telephony, email, social media and face-to-face contact.
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A certain city paid for the design, printing and mailing of Neighborhood Watch fliers to every resident. All but a very few residents ignored the fliers.
I recently consulted with a fellow who has been trying to start a Neighborhood Watch and I asked him what he has done so far. He told me he had made "door hanger" announcements and hung them on doors around his neighborhood. Nobody replied. That's a 0% return on effort and investment.
I'm not a big fan of inefficiency so a few years ago when I was part of a committee that was planning a community event I was disgusted when our main sponsor said they knew from experience that this event would get 30 attendees and they found that acceptable. How did they know the event would get 30 attendee? They knew because they had done this event in other cities and they knew from experience that if they sent 5,000 post cards they'd get 30 attendees.
That's a .006 % return.
Needless to say, I wasn't satisfied so I wrote media releases which got me invited to be a guest on several local radio talk shows where I promoted the event. It was perfect. We were aiming at an audience of pentagenarians which happens to be who listens to talk radio. Instead of the 30 registrants our major sponsor predicted we got hundreds of registrants and we had to waitlist people, move into a larger venue and repeat the event several times. My deep pocketed sponsor squealed with delight.
Very few people respond to fliers on their doors or in their mailboxes so when you're trying to start a Neighborhood Watch, do what works: knock on every door in your neighborhood and ask the residents for their email addresses, cell phone numbers and any other contact info they have. I can tell you from experience that nearly 100% of the people I've asked have gladly given me the info when I explain to them that this is how they're going to receive crime tips, meeting announcements, etc.
During a recent power outage in my ward I texted people with up-to-the-minute info I was getting from the power company guys who were working to repair the downed line and get the power back on. People actually asked me to add them to my text message list as a result of that reporting.
Don't be satisfied with a .006% return. Do what delivers a nearly 100% return. Knock on doors and ask people for their contact info. Then keep them informed. They'll appreciate it. They'll tell their neighbors. Some of them will come out to a meeting where they can meet their police, their council person and their neighbors and start to feel part of a neighborhood again.
And if you live in the city limits of St. Albans, WV, join "Public Group For St. Albans WV Neighborhood Watch."
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St. Albans is named for a Protestant martyr and it's full of Baptist churches and other churches that believe in the "priesthood of all believers" but in matters of civic life we behave more like Catholics waiting for the pope to give us his imprimatur to do something that needs to be done.
In St. Albans, there is no pope who can tell you whether or not to start a Neighborhood Watch. The mayor can't give you permission, your city councilman and the chief of police can't stop you.
You don't need the blessing of the newly-formed Neighborhood Watch Advisory Council.
If your neighborhood doesn't have a Neighborhood Watch and nobody is lifting a finger to get one started, maybe you should do it.
There are people who will help you. Really.
Just a word about that newly-formed Neighborhood Watch Advisory Council: I haven't published the names of the 13 people who gathered for our first meeting because some of them aren't used to the inexplicable chorus of criticism that greets anyone who tries to do anything positive in a small town. I have the sign-in sheet in front of me and I count 13 people. Police Chief Matthews and the other officers who were there know that criticism goes with the paycheck - and boy are they used to it. The four city council members who were there know that criticism goes with the job and they can take it, too. If you include me, at least 6 of the people on the sign-in sheet are private citizens who spend their own time and, yes, their own money to make their neighborhoods safer. These people don't deserve to be attacked just because they came out of their offices or homes on a Friday afternoon to find out how they can help out citywide so I've decided not to publish the names of these private citizens. Their names will leak out soon enough and they'll find out that the old saying really is true: no good deed goes unpunished.
Like I said, you don't need anyone's permission to start a Neighborhood Watch but if you want some help starting one, call me and you'll get the help you need.
And if you live in the city limits of St. Albans, WV, join "Public Group For St. Albans WV Neighborhood Watch."
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For Immediate Release 21 September 2013
Thirteen St. Albans WV Neighborhood Watch stakeholders met Friday afternoon to discuss the formation of a citywide Neighborhood Watch Advisory Board to provide encouragement and advice to new and struggling neighborhood watch programs, to promote the formation of neighborhood watch programs in the wards that do not yet have them and to define and measure the progress and success of neighborhood watch programs throughout the city of St. Albans.
Attendees included members of St. Albans city council, members of the St. Albans Police Department and neighborhood watch leaders from 4 wards.
This Advisory Board will meet the third Friday of each month. Next meeting is October 18.
Contact:
Joseph Higginbotham
(304) 550-6710
JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com
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If your organization is boycotting reality and modernity, you are doomed to get older, grayer and fewer in numbers as the young career-minded people boycott you.
In yesterday's post about "boycotting reality" I said that if your organization pretends not to know that Google is the new Yellow Pages and Twitter and Facebook and blogs are not going away just because you won't use them. I'm reminded of what megachurch pastor, Leith Anderson, said about dying churches: They go to bed every night praying that tomorrow morning it will be 1950 again.
Organizations get more of what they already have because people flock to similar people. Blacks flock to blacks, young flocks to young, old flocks to old. If you want to save your organization from death and make it relevant to the younger career-oriented people you need to grow it into a new decade you need to literally go out and find some hip, connected, charismatic young professionals and make them leaders in your old and gray, dying, irrelevant organization. If you do this, two things will result:
1. These charismatic younger folks will attract more young members.
2. These young professionals will tell you how to make your organization more attractive to young professionals.
Put some young professionals - even some college students - on your board. Appoint them to empty offices. If you stop boycotting the future, the future will stop boycotting you.
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Do a quick reality check with me. Does this sound like an organization you belong to?
1. Median member age is rising.
2. Total membership is falling.
If you're squirming in your seat, congratulations; the ability to face facts is the first step toward fixing what's broken in your organization. if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting the results you've been getting.
Yesterday I needed to get in touch with somebody in the leadership of the local chapter of an organization that used to appeal to young professional women but now has a declining membership, a rising median age and is totally striking out with the kind of young professional women who started this org in the last century. They made it way too hard for me to find them and revealed exactly why they aren't reaching young professional women. Here's what I mean:
1. The don't have a website. They aren't even on their national org's website. When you look up state chapters West Virginia isn't even on the list.
2. None of their officers come up in a Linkedin search.
3. They don't blog.
4. They don't Tweet.
5. They do have a Facebook group but it only has 2 members. Two members.
If young, career-oriented people can't find you via Google search, if they can't find your leadership on LInkedin, not only don't you exist but you have told them that they don't need to find you because you are boycotting reality.
Young professionals don't have the option of boycotting reality. Reality bites them every day. Their careers and their upward mobility depend upon them being firmly in touch with reality.
In what I call my first real job I wrote and bought advertising for a local company. In those days - nearly 35 years ago - people used the Yellow Pages to find everything. Advertising in the Yellow Pages was a no-brainer. I had to do it. If you weren't in the Yellow Pages you didn't exist.
Things have changed. Have you changed or are you still running your organization as if it's 1980?
If you don't like the results you're getting - falling membership and rising median age - you have to change what you're doing.
Don't boycott reality and don't wait until you understand what Linkedin is and how people use it. Don't wait until you know how people use Twitter. Believe me now and understand me later, start blogging and Tweeting. Get on LInkedin. Start a Facebook group. Don't wait until you understand why.
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Stop using the "I'm not a techy" excuse.
You may not understand why people are using great new communication tools like Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, blogs, et al, but just because you don't understand them is no excuse not to use them.
If you're old enough to remember your first phone, your first cell phone, your first email account, your first fax machine or any other first of its kind communication device, here's what you need to know: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and blogs are the equivalent of those first phones but better because they are free. If you're already paying for internet you're already paying for Linkedin, blogs, Twitter and Facebook but not getting the benefit from them unless you stop saying "I'm not a techy".
You don't have to be a techy to use Twitter, Linkedin, blogs and Facebook. But if you aren't there, people who use these tools will think you are a knuckledragging cave man who doesn't take his Neighborhood Watch effort seriously enough to make it easy for people to get the info they need. Even if it's true, stop saying "I'm not a techy". Stop making excuses. These free tools are easy to learn and use and using them will help you build your Neighborhood Watch.
Yes, I know, somebody reading this post has no idea what Twitter does or how to use it. Somebody reading this post has never heard of Linkedin. That's OK, you didn't kow what you were going to do with email, either, but now you can't live without it.
What? You still don't use email? Then please step aside and help somebody else become your Neighborhood Watch leader - somebody who understands the necessity of constant communication and interaction between people who are trying to build something together. When, according to the Bible, God didn't like mankind building the Tower of Babel, how did God thwart that effort? Right, according to the Bible, God rendered the tower builder unable to communicate with each other.
Communication and interaction are absolutely necessary to the start up and the management of your Neighborhood Watch. If you don't resonate with what I just said you are not the right person to lead a Neighborhood Watch.
Get your free Twitter account, your free blog, your free Linkedin and your Free Facebook. Print up some business cards and put this info on your card. Carry your card everywhere and hand one to everybody you meet in your neighborhood.
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"A crowd is a tribe without a leader.
A crowd is a tribe without communication."
As my regular readers know, I often recommend Seth Godin's Tribes - from which the above quote is borrowed - to people who don't have the communication gene and don't understand why you can't start anything until you create a way for people with a shared interest to communicate with each other. The basic message of Tribes is that whoever wants to lead - turn a mere crowd into a tribe - must figure out how to get the future tribe members to communicate with each other.
If what I have said above doesn't resonate with you, I strongly urge you not to try to be a leader in your neighborhood watch. The famous evangelist, Dwight Moody, was once asked what he considered to be his greatest accomplishment. The asker expected some recounting of souls saved at some protracted meeting but instead D L Moody told the asker that his greatest accomplishment was persuading a great number of unqualified people not to enter the ministry. I'm doing the same thing here. I'm trying to prevent people who don't have the communication gene not to start a neighborhood watch. Find someone else.
To grow a successful Neighborhood Watch you have to leave the witness protection program and step out into the light and make yourself easy to find. Start a Facebook group (not a page) where your tribe can talk to each other. Start a Linkedin group. Start a website. Open a free Twitter account. Start a free blog on blogspot or some other free blog hosting site.
Some so-called Neighborhood Watch leaders don't return phone calls, don't answer email and don't monitor the websites and other online platforms they've created. These people clearly lack both the empathy gene and the communication gene and should not be leaders in their Neighborhood Watch.
And most of all, knock on every door in your defined Neighborhood Watch area and collect the names, email addresses and cell phone numbers of every human you can.
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Some Neighborhood watch groups are run by local police departments. Dunbar, WV, for example, is police run and city-funded.
Others are run by local elected officials.
Still others - like mine - are citizen-led and receive no help whatsoever from any local government or law enforcement entity.
Some Neighborhood Watch groups call themselves "Crime Watches" instead of Neighborhood Watches - especially since so-called "Neighborhood Watch volunteer", George Zimmerman, fatally shot Trayvon Martin. Some people think the term "Neighborhood Watch" racial profiling and gun-toting vigilantism. Some think the term "Crime Watch" or even "Neighborhood Crime Watch" somehow connotes something different from the term "Neighborhood Watch". To most people this may be a distinction without a difference. Supposedly, a "Neighborhood Watch" actually patrols the streets while a "Crime Watch" simply reports crimes that can be seen from porches or through windows without patrolling.
Whatever your neighborhood watch group calls itself, until you have, say, 25% of your neighborhood involved, you simply don't have the eyeballs to mount much of a neighborhood watch effort.
In previous posts I've said that you can't have a Neighborhood Watch until you've first created a sense of neighborhood, until you've gotten neighbors connecting with neighbors. From a crime prevention standpoint, what does a Neighborhood Watch do? Mostly it gives members a heightened ability to detect and respond to crime and suspicious activity. How do you train people to spot crime and suspicious activity and how do you teach them when to dial 911 if you don't have a fast, free way to communicate with them, e.g., through email and text? If you haven't done that, capturing contact info is still Job One for your watch group no matter what you call it or who runs it.
Don't kid yourself. If there are hundreds of people in your defined neighborhood and you only have contact information for about a dozen people and only half a dozen or so come to your meetings, your first concern should be collection of email addresses and cell phone numbers.
Look at my blog archive for previous posts about how to do that.
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You don't wait until you're dying of thirst to dig a well.
You can't ride a train until somebody has laid track.
You can't build a Neighborhood Watch until you have first created a means of communicating with the people you want to invite to meetings, train, etc.
Don't waste your time and money on flyers that you stick behind storm doors. Inexplicably, the people who stand to benefit from participating in your Neighborhood Watch will perversely ignore your flyers.
But nearly 100% of the people who answer the door will comply with your request for their email addresses and cell phone numbers.
The time and energy you'll spend hanging flyers is better spent actually knocking on doors and collecting email addresses and cell phone numbers from somebody in that home.
As you collect email addresses and cell phone numbers, enter this data into text message lists and email lists so you can blast crime tips, police tips, meeting notices and other info to the people on the list.
Neighborhood Watch startup is not for the lazy. If you don't go out and collect the information you need the hard way, you simply will not get the information unless you buy it from somebody. And the people who have that kind of data know how valuable it is and won't sell it cheap.
If you're old enough to remember when churches had "visitation" programs and actually went out and knocked on doors and invited people to church then you know this: churches with bad preachers could still grow attendance if they were willing to go out and knock on doors.
Your neighborhood watch's target audience will mostly ignore your flyers and your free media coverage. If you buy an ad in the paper, they'll ignore that.
Bt if you go to their door and ask for contact information, nearly 100% of the people you talk to will give you the train track that your train of information will run on.
More importantly, you've started a conversation which, when it results in a relationship, will result in people getting active in neighborhood watch. I actually receive "thank you" notes from people who receive my email blasts and text message blasts.
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In yesterday's post about the most controversial aspect of Neighborhood Watch I mentioned the discouragement, the burnout and the loneliness of Neighborhood Watch leaders and then I moved to do something about it in my own little town. I sent letters to the chief of police and to several of our town's Neighborhood Watch leaders. I proposed that we start meeting together on a regular basis to do the following:
1.Encourage each other.
2. Discuss best practices
3. Define and measure Neighborhood Watch progress and success because what gets measured gets done.
We could call this meeting the St. Albans Neighborhood Watch Task Force or we could call it a Neighborhood Watch support group. I don't care what we call it as long as we do it.
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No aspect of starting a Neighborhood Watch is more controversial than meetings - how to conduct them and when to hold them.
Never cancel a Neighborhood Watch Meeting. In a previous post I said that Neighborhood Watch leaders have to be like Cortes burning his ships in the harbor. No turning back. Once you start holding meetings you can't ever cancel them. Remember, your skeptical, late adopting neighbors are waiting for you to fail and they are watching for signs that you are failing. Meeting cancellations say "We're not really committed to this."
If you discover that your meetings are held at a day and time when only a few people can come, then change the meeting day and time but don't ever cancel a meeting. If you were shopping for a church and the one you were considering occasionally just nailed a note to the door saying the Sunday meetings are cancelled, you'd stop attending, right? Same thing with Neighborhood Watch. When I encounter angry people who were early adopters in some previous Neighborhood Watch effort, they're usually mad because Neighborhood Watch meetings were cancelled - sometimes just an hour before the meeting. It happened to me twice and I was furious because, in both cases, I went out knocking on doors and inviting people to the meeting only to find when I arrived at the meeting place that the meeting had been cancelled. In both cases I hung around for a while to talk to anyone I invited.
The first promise I made when I became the coordinator was that I would never cancel a meeting.
No turning back. Once you start holding meetings, burn your ships in the harbor and show the neighborhood that you are not going away.
What to do at meetings? Some Neighborhood Watch groups always have "special speakers". Some have guest speakers occasionally. Some Neighborhood Watch groups use meetings for training .e.g., how to recognize drug activity or how to secure your home and property. And then these various groups criticize each other because they don't hold the same kinds of meetings.
I don't think it matters so much what you do at your meetings as much as it matters that you regularly get people together in the same room and get them interacting with each other and encouraging each other and building the sense of community without which you'll never have an effective Neighborhood Watch.
And there's no rule that Neighborhood Watch meetings must be held weekly or monthly. There's also no rule that meetings must be formal or informal.
My own Neighborhood Watch meetings occur at 6:30PM the first Tuesday of each month in a church fellowship hall. At the 6:30 hour we may be competing with supper so I've wondered if we shouldn't either (A) change the meeting time or (B) combine supper and neighborhood Watch meeting. We'd need the permission of our host and we'd need some money for food and we'd need volunteers to prepare and serve food and clean up the church kitchen afterwards. I'd like to try it. Few things get people interacting and bonding like sharing a meal.
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In an earlier post I said that people are waiting for your Neighborhood Watch effort to fail. Many of them have seen it all before. Chances are that your Neighborhood has some signs that say "This neighborhood protected by neighborhood watch" or some such wording. A friend of mine calls those signs "scarecrows". I call them monuments to the failure of some failed neighborhood watch effort from a previous decade. In most cases those signs are false advertising.
But here is the corollary to my previous statement that people are waiting for you to fail: Nothing succeeds like success. Some of the people who ignored your fliers and didn't attend your meetings will come around when their neighbors get involved and you have proven that, this time, the Neighborhood Watch effort is going to succeed. When their neighbors tell them they are receiving emails or texts from Neighborhood Watch that inform them about what's going on in the neighborhood, they'll decide they want to get in on it. Most people are not early adopters of anything "new". They wait and see. The trick is not to give up just when you're about to succeed.
And when some unknown number of people join up and start talking to their neighbors and coming to meetings, your Neighborhood Watch effort will reach critical mass and become a self-perpetuating force in the neighborhood.
Tragically, some of the best Neighborhood Watch organizers get discouraged and quit just when they are about to succeed. When Ernest Hemingway was asked how he went bankrupt he said "Gradually then suddenly." Neighborhood Watch success is like that. At first, it's hard to see progress but suddenly someone steps up to help you canvass the neighborhood and capture the precious and vital names and contact information you need to communicate with the people who ignored your fliers. Suddenly you see new faces at a Neighborhood Watch meeting. Suddenly something happens in the neighborhood that shakes people from their lethargy and apathy. Maybe a shooting or a crime wave or an abduction or a rape will rattle the neighborhood. Fear and anger are powerful motivators.
Historians disagree on this, but it's been said that Cortes burned his ships in the harbor as a sign to his crew and to the occupants of The New World that failure was not an option. There was no turning back to Europe. Whether this story is true or not, it's the attitude Neighborhood Watch organizers have to adopt. No turning back. Keep knocking on doors. Keep holding meetings even if they are poorly attended at first. Your success will come gradually then suddenly.
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I'm rooting for Scott Finn, the new executive director at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, because, unlike his predecessor, he invites public comment on WVPubCasting's programming. Mr. Finn has been traveling the state listening to the Friends ( read "donors") of West Virginia Public Broadcasting. It's a start.
But Scott Finn must also listen to potential and former supporters of WV PubCasting, not just "Friends".
And if WVPubCasting is to make a comeback, the EBA must pledge to actually read its stated mission and its stated vision - available on the WVPubCasting website - and insist that programming reflect those stated values. I spoke to at least one board member who didn't know a "mission statement" and a "vision statement" existed. These statements are a little hard to find. You have to scroll down to the bottom of the home page and click on "about us".
And the EBA must pledge to actually watch public TV and listen to public radio so they can monitor Finn's progress at getting the programming aligned with the mission and vision. At least one EBA member admitted to me privately that he/she is not familiar with WV PubCasting's programming.
I think it would be appropriate if EBA chairman, William H. File III, asked each and every board member to sign a pledge to read the mission/vision statement and to regularly consume public radio and public TV.
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KKeywords: Nitro, WV, West Virginia, Saint Albans, St. Albans, Dunbar, Charleston, Kanawha, Speaker bureau, speakers bureau, speaker's bureau, speakers' bureau, guest speaker, 25177, 25143, 25303, 25309, 25301, 25302, 25305, 25311, 25314, 25304, neighborhood watch, animal rights, animal welfare, no-kill, shelters,
What's happening at the Kanawha Charleston Humane Association animal shelter is a perfect example of the old saying that whoever frames the debate wins the debate. If the goal of animal welfare people is prevention of animal suffering, the no kill people may be on the losing side of the debate but if the goal is to keep as many animals as possible alive for as long as possible, then the people who have taken over the Kanawha Charleston Humane Association shelter will win. The question is, are the animals winning?
People who care about animals used to be concerned primarily with prevention of animal suffering. One big animal welfare organization has the words "Prevention of Cruelty To Animals" in its name. If that organization were to form today in the Kanawha Valley it would have to call itself "Prevention of the Death of Animals" or it wouldn't be able to raise money and would be accused of being "soft" on animal welfare. To satisfy the "no kill animal shelter" people, PETA would have to become People For the Prevention of the Death of Animals and HSUS would have to become Animal Immortality Society of the United States.
In the late 80s I accidentally and briefly stumbled into the forefront of what passed for a small animal rights movement in the Kanawha Valley when the emphasis was on prevention of suffering rather than animal immortality. Along with the late Rev. Bill Kirkland and a handful of other "animal lovers" who didn't even know each other's views on euthanasia or veganism made signs and staged a peaceful protect outside the Charleston Civic Center to express our displeasure over what we believed was an animal exploiting event. News cameras showed up. Reporters started interviewing us. Event ticket holders started heckling us and shouting questions we hadn't even asked each other.
"Do you wear leather?"
"Do you eat meat?"
The crowd question that puzzled me most was this one: "Do you believe in abortion?"
When I got that question a few times I asked some of the hecklers what my position on abortion had to do with cruelty to animals.
"You tree-hugging animal rights people are always pro-abortion" came the answer.
If he was right, he knew more about us than we knew about each other. I didn't know what my fellow protesters believed about abortion. I only knew that all of us were against animal suffering as each of us thought of it. I knew that some animal welfare people were vegetarians and that others were vegans but I hadn't asked any of my fellow protesters if they ate meat or wore leather.
We're all more sophisticated than that now. We've read the books of Dr. Tom Regan and Dr. Peter Singer. College philosophy and ethics courses grapple with the responsibilities of humans toward sentient non-humans. Overall, I think that all this scholarly attention to how humans should treat non-humans is likely to result in better treatment and less suffering of animals but the no kill movement, I'm afraid, will actually result in more, not less, animal suffering. Some animals really are better off dead. Months or years in a cage at a no kill shelter is not a life worth living. I can't prove it, of course, but I suspect that if we could ask the animals if they would prefer a painless death to a life being trucked from no kill shelter to foster home to foster home to no kill shelter, many of them would choose painless death to what passes for life in the no kill world.
A euthanized animal can never again be tortured, starved, beaten or neglected by humans. A euthanized animal can no longer be broken hearted by a human who dumped him at an animal shelter. Dear reader: if you one day find me dead and unable to care for my 5 rescue cats, please either take them to your home and love them the way I do or take them to a good veterinarian and put them painlessly to sleep.
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Higginbotham At Large reads all submitted comments but only publishes comments from clearly identified submitters. No Ring of Gyges for you.
KKeywords: Nitro, WV, West Virginia, Saint Albans, St. Albans, Dunbar, Charleston, Kanawha, Speaker bureau, speakers bureau, speaker's bureau, speakers' bureau, guest speaker, 25177, 25143, 25303, 25309, 25301, 25302, 25305, 25311, 25314, 25304, neighborhood watch, animal rights, animal welfare, no-kill, shelters,
At last night's neighborhood watch meeting I was reminded again of how much simple things like the size and shape of the room and the seating arrangement affect group dynamics.
My neighborhood watch group normally meets in the fellowship hall of a church where it's possible to scoot all the card tables together and get everybody on the same elevation, looking each other in the eyes, but, because we had a special speaker and anticipated a big crowd, we held last night's meeting in the sanctuary. It changed everything. For the worse. I was disoriented all evening long.
I've never liked meetings where all the seats face toward the front because the pulpit or the podium or the dais or the lectern is in the front. First, this seating arrangement implies that the only person in the room of any importance is whoever is standing at front speaking. Second, this arrangement stifles interaction between speaker and audience. Third, this kind of seating arrangement makes Q and A and room-wide interaction difficult. I don't even like this arrangement when I am the guest speaker.
I've said before that you can't have an effective and successful neighborhood watch until you have first created the conditions that lead to a sense of community and cohesion and unity and neighborliness. Large rooms and all-seats-pointed-toward-the-front seating arrangement works at counter purposes to creating that sense of neighborliness we need.
Where possible, hold your meetings in a cozy, intimate room where people can be seated in a circle or around a square or rectangular table.
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Higginbotham At Large reads all submitted comments but only publishes comments from clearly identified submitters. No Ring of Gyges for you.
KKeywords: Nitro, WV, West Virginia, Saint Albans, St. Albans, Dunbar, Charleston, Kanawha, Speaker bureau, speakers bureau, speaker's bureau, speakers' bureau, guest speaker, 25177, 25143, 25303, 25309, 25301, 25302, 25305, 25311, 25314, 25304, neighborhood watch
