4.0. SR 08-22-1994 - Laserfiche WebLink

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-, THEME STATEMENT 1994 Itasca Seminar . "Wholeness Incorporating Diversity: Building Sustainable Communities" The 1994 Itasca Seminar will focus on community, for we have reached a critical turning point in the Twin Cities metro area at which we can no longer take community for granted. "Community" is often a most misused word, in part because we devote so little time to understanding what we mean by it. This much we do know: our region is changing significantly. Our population is more diverse, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing, we have the highest percentage of people of color in poverty of any metropolitan area in the country, violent crime is up (especially among youth), and our primary institutions that teach values and ethical systems are coming up short. Related to all of this as both cause and effect is the breakdown of community, something we can reverse through understanding and joint effort. . "Wholeness Incorporating Diversity: Building Sustainable Communities" is the logical outcome of a number of activities in which The Minneapolis Foundation has been involved in the past few years. The 1990-93 Itasca Seminars on racism, diversity, and violence have highlighted a serious breakdown of community. \Vhen significant portions of the population are left out of meaningful participatiOl1. and equal opportunities, we do not have what can truly be called community. When violence becomes a primary form of resolving real or imagined differences, community exists in name only. As The Minneapolis Foundation has gone through a strategic planning process over the past two years, it has become clear that building community by fostering relationships must be a priority for us. The social fabric is torn, and will become tattered without a conscious and sustained effort to understand the essential elements of community and to nurture its continuous renewal. This.is not an academic exercise. Unless and until we turn our attention to community, the quality of life in the Twin Cities will continue to slide. We take our title and inspiration for this Itasca Seminar from Common Cause and Independent Sector founder and social theorist John W. Gardner, who wrote recently in "Building Community" the following: "Wholeness incorporating diversity is the transcendent goal of our time, the task for our generation." Our recent work has taught us the same lesson, though not so concisely and eloquently. Community is always important, for it is at once the context in which we defme ourselves as individuals and the means by which people live together. When our region was more homogeneous, it was easier to take community for granted. Now that our region is experiencing demographic change, we can no longer allow ourselves the luxury of complacency. We must invent new processes of interaction throughout our region that will enable us to live together in community. .