• To solve pressing issues we need facts without favoritism.
  • And a framework for making a difference.
  • And a framework for making a difference.
  • Research that inspires problem solving.
  • Research that inspires problem solving.

NETWORK CALENDAR

Connect with NIF

The latest issue of The Moderators Circle is out with stories on the new Safety and Justice issue guide and Kara Dillard's moderator training workshops coming up this month. If you missed the issue, you can read a copy at http://conta.cc/2knDbYP.

FREE issue guides (and a companion video) are available to the first 100 moderators or conveners who sign up to hold a forum using the new National Issues Forums (NIF) issue guide, Safety and Justice.

Click here to read more and for a link to sign up to hold a forum(s) and to get your free materials.

 

I am interested in how the 2015 launch of the conversation regarding Higher Education has progressed or developed.

Did you know there is an area of the NIF website where we are beginning to collect resources that may be helpful as you learn about moderating or prepare to moderate your next forum? Moderator resources.

Have you created your own moderator resource, or know of links to other favorite resources that you've found helpful? We invite you to share them with the rest of the network. Just click on "submit a resource."

According to Aali Shafi point of view, the first and foremost issue in Pakistan is education. It is what differentiates us from the so-called first world. It gives us the power to think and the ability to differentiate the right from the wrong. Our thoughts get reflected in our actions. Just take a minute to visualize the difference that will impact our lives if 200 million plus Pakistani were doing this on a daily basis. Education here is not only being referred to as advanced technical knowledge but to vocational and character building one.

The problems facing Pakistan while seemingly complex and enormous are actually simpler then they seem. What we have been looking at are the symptoms, what we need to focus on are the root causes and work on them so as to bring in the change required to set the correction momentum rolling. This by no means is a quick solutions, but the only one to correct the disarray we find ourselves in.

This is important to me for many reasons. I have 2 disabilities that I know of and they are bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. I notice it has a problem as a child. During grade school I was picked on because of my height and I developed breasts before many of the other children. I can't remember being hated until I attended parochial school. They laughed at me. Then did not want to talk to me. How does a child grow up in an environment where the other children do not wish to talk to them? That causes schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which is a form of depression.

Making each Step Count

Outside to inside classrooms

Hi all,
I'm interested in getting a group together to practice facilitating on CGA. I imagine it happening separately from the #cgafridays events, but would be like 6-8 people who rotate facilitator biweekly. If you're interested we can work out dates, times, topics, etc. Email me: kndillard [at] alaska [dot] edu.

Kara

ABOUT THE NIF

National Issues Forums (NIF) is a network of civic, educational, and other organizations, and individuals, whose common interest is to promote public deliberation in America. It includes civic clubs, religious organizations, libraries, schools, and many other groups that meet to discuss critical public issues. Forum participants range from teenagers to retirees, prison inmates to community leaders, and literacy students to university students.

NIF does not advocate specific solutions or points of view but provides citizens the opportunity to consider a broad range of choices, weigh the pros and cons of those choices, and meet with each other in a public dialogue to identify the concerns they hold in common.

DELIBERATIVE DECISION MAKING: WHERE CHANGE BEGINS

There is a way to tackle problems more directly. Deliberative decision making. Find out how to leverage the power of personal experience, different viewpoints, and the kind of intelligent exchange that leads to a shared purpose and acceptable solutions.

There’s a space between agree/disagree waiting to be discovered.

When it comes to society’s most challenging problems, our elected officials are often stuck between a two-party rock and a hard place. That’s because they aren’t getting honest input from the people they serve.

You can change that, by reviving a lost democratic practice: deliberative decision making.