Listening Sessions at CHN

Listening sessions are gatherings designed to facilitate open dialogue and gather community input, often focused on building relationships and identifying shared goals. These sessions are a key component of broad-based organizing, a model that emphasizes relational power and community engagement to address social problems. 

Our goals are to build on the relational culture at CHN, listen to one another, and identify leaders who want to act. We want to hear from members of our community about the issues impacting their lives and empower one another to make change. Strengthening our relationships within CHN, between CHN and our local community, and between institutions  helps us to build our capacity to act together. 

Are these listening sessions for CHN? 100% yes! We want to open up dialogue with one another about what's impacting the lives of members of our community and to identify and support leaders who want to act to make change.

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Are these listening sessions for DuPage United? This question is a little more nuanced. And the clearest answer is yes, no, maybe so. Listening sessions are a tool of broad-based organizing. Facilitators have been trained through DuPage United to help guide our discussions so that they build our capacity to act on the things we care about. We're also conducting our listening sessions simultaneously with other DuPage United institutions. It could be that issues arise that many institutions care about, which could lead to a campaign that we act on with others around the county. That's a possible end, but we're not digging in particular for these issues. We simply want to hear what's impacting those in our community, who wants to act, and how we can make change together. 

Ultimately, the goal of the listening sessions is to act together on what we care about. So the listening sessions are just the first step. We'll be following up with additional targeted listening sessions, one-on-ones, and actions to build our ability to act together.