final+paper




 * FINAL PAPER**
 * Due by email or posted on Wiki by Dec. 7, 6 p.m.**

A small committee of parents in the Troostwood Neighborhood has come to you with an idea and asked for your help. They are concerned about the Kansas City Missouri School District and they would like to discuss the potential for creating a neighborhood-based school that would serve the children who live in the surrounding neighborhoods. They think perhaps people who work at nearby institutions and large businesses might also want to enroll their children in such a school, and that they could drop them off in the morning and pick them up in the evening at the school.

The parents have formed a nonprofit organization with this mission: //To create an effective and sustainable neighborhood-based grade school near 45th and Troost in Kansas City and to serve both neighborhood children and the children of nearby businesses and institutions.//

These parents know that they would be very interested in sending their own children to such a school, but they are not sure how businesses and institutions as well as other neighborhoods would react. They want you to plan a meeting or a series of meetings. When you meet with them the first time, they say they have no idea how to have a community meeting or how to get started in achieving their mission. You ask them a series of questions and learn:
 * They have not talked to anyone else about the project, including neighborhoods, businesses or institutions
 * They live in the neighborhood but don’t know a lot about it
 * They are looking to your for advice on how to engage the community around their mission

The first thing you will do is help the group develop a goal for your community engagement activities. You help them concisely state a goal in a way that will resonate with residents and community members in the area. Clearly the goal may change as your work progresses, but develop a working goal that will get the process started. Explain in detail why this goal is the starting point for accomplishing the mission of the group. In other words, the goal is not to get the school up and running, but to engage the community in some way that will lead to a specific outcome that is the first step toward the overall mission. As usual, there is no right or wrong answer, but the logic that led you to choose this goal must fit within the parameters of **high-level** community engagement.
 * Goal of community engagement activity**
 * Explain what community engagement goal you have chosen and why you think it is the most appropriate goal and how it engages the community while moving the group toward its mission(1 page)

Your next step is to conduct enough research to move ahead with the goal you have selected. Without doing a lot of additional research about the community, and drawing upon previous work you have done with Troostwood, detail the various reports, demographic information and types of information you would propose to collect before the community engagement begins. Also include ten community stakeholders (by role, not necessarily by name) and explain why you would interview each one of them and what type of information you would hope to obtain.
 * Initial research**


 * Discuss what type of research you would propose to be done before the engagement (1 page)

Next, you are going to need to give the parents’ group a list of the stakeholders you think need to be in the room in order for the community engagement to take place. Remember that to be successful, you have to have everyone involved in the issue in the room. Create a list of stakeholders (again, by role, not necessarily by name). Explain in detail what each stakeholder brings to the table, what concerns you might expect them to have, and what assets they might be able to contribute to creation of the school (assuming the community wants to go ahead with its creation).
 * Stakeholder recruitment**

But you will have to do more than just send out a letter to people to get them to show up at the meeting. Since you are the facilitator and the group is counting on your to get the right people in the room, submit a detailed plan that shows 10 things you will do to recruit participants and why each of those ten things will help get people to attend the meeting.


 * Develop a list of stakeholders who must be in the room and a plan for recruiting them (1 page)

You must now find a place in which to hold the community engagement activity. If it is one meeting or several meetings, assume that you will have about 50 people attending the meeting. Some of the people attending may bring their children. Describe either a specific place you would use for the meeting or the type of place you would use including: Finally, develop a rough outline for the meeting. (I page)
 * Meeting logistics**
 * The size and shape of the room
 * How the chairs and tables will be set up
 * What meeting related items you will need (like cookies, bottled water, supplies for documenting who is there and what happens at the meeting)
 * When day of the week and what time will the meeting take place?
 * How long will it last?
 * Who will assist you with conducting the meeting and what will they do?
 * Meeting outline**
 * What groundrules will you suggest to the group?
 * If people need some education before the meeting, describe how you will deliver it and how much time you will allow for it.
 * What do you hope to accomplish at the meeting? Be specific and concrete. It may help to think that you will have to write a report about the meeting, so you will need to know in advance what information you want to gather that will help your parents group make the decisions they need to make based on the goal.
 * What are the three key questions you will need to ask at the meeting in order to get the information you need?