As you all know, we are living in unusual times. It is a time of physical separation from most and/or constant togetherness with others; a time of vulnerability and stress because of a fiendishly clever virus and the disease it causes. It is a time for some of working from home, schooling at home, eating at home, and finding amusement at home. For others it is a time of going to work and being at risk of contracting serious illness and/or bringing that illness home and, at the same time, of finding child or elder care or schooling help. And at WES it is a time when the Community Relations Committee (CRC) has led community development of our Community Relations Pact and is in the process of developing workshops to help us make the Pact the basis of how we communicate with and act towards each other. We now have a plan for that.
Over the past two years, the CRC spent considerable time, effort, and love developing a Communications Pact that is reflective of the way that WES wants to engage and live as a community. You may recall that everyone at WES received a color copy of the document through the mail. The Pact has four key substantive areas that cover a broad range of skills, behaviors, and attitudes. The four areas (for easy reference) are: 1) Improving Communications, 2) Sustaining Positive Relationships, 3) Resolving Conflicts, and 4) Building Healthy Community.
The CRC then began a process of designing a framework and exploring possible approaches to help improve the communication skills of WES members to embody the Pact in our interactions. The workshop framework considers the following three aspects:
- Reflect the Pact, i.e., be integrated with and tailored to WES;
- Provide substantive opportunities to 1) learn the theory of the skill and 2) practice the skill; and
- Function smoothly (i.e., the technology should work smoothly, and participants should be able to view and access the materials).
In essence, these Community Relations training workshop opportunities will be a bridge between the theory of how we hope to communicate with each other and actual practiced skills. We will be looking at including an educational component with skill-building and practicing opportunities which will be offered in each of these four areas once per year.
We’ll be keeping you posted on this initiative in future blogs. Stay healthy!