Saturday Afternoon - October 24, 2009

U of T Conference Centre, 89 Chestnut Street

In this time slot, which runs from 1:30-5:00 p.m.,  Please choose a program that works for you.  Please Note: Some sessions can only accept a limited number of participants; participants will be admitted into the room on a first come first serve basis.  We recommend you have a second session chosen so that if the room is full, you can move to your second choice.

From 1:30-3:00 – Concurrent Sessions 700s

Cathy Ann Kelly
701.  Victims, Offenders and Community: In Dialogue for Change (St. Patrick North)
Restorative justice, restorative approaches and restorative practices are becoming common buzz words in our social justice circles. What do they mean? What do they mean to Canadians and how do they affect our lives? These are some of the questions that will be asked during this interactive workshop. You will explore the meaning of safety, restitution, retribution and justice through activities, art and music. The facilitator will integrate teachings from three different restorative projects: conflict resolution training of federal inmates, restorative approaches training of educators and students and interventions in communities.  Through dialogue we will explore crime, harm and connectedness in our modern world. We invite you to join us in seeing how you can be a leader in strengthening and nourishing your community through conversations.

Carol van den Kerkhof
702.  Participatory Budgeting: How We Got There (St. Patrick South)
Tenants will lead participants through the participatory budgeting process that they participate in annually.  Each participant will be invited along with facilitators to assume the role of different stakeholders involved.  During this role play, participants will select and advocate for the priority they determine will have the best outcome for their community based on information they are given.  Participants will also see how Toronto Community Housing Youth have been involved and how they have worked to be integrated into the process.   We will speak on the barriers youth have faced and continue to face in legitimizing our voices at decision-making tables.  And we will also look at the challenges of participatory budgeting.

Jae Kim
703. Youth4Water (Terrace West)
Youth4Water collaborate with professionals and students, in the hope of sparking intergenerational dialogue about water issues.  Some of our highlights include: representing Canada at the International Water Expo in Zaragoza Spain, presenting our youth statement on water in the Parliament press room; creating a mural which was displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum; participating in the first Model International Joint Commission – simulated water negotiations between Canada and the U.S.   The successes of our original group of seven have served as a model for five additional Youth Advisory Committees on water across Canada.  We believe greater youth representation in dialogues in areas of government and social movements not only strengthens communities but also promotes higher learning and democracy.
Peter Jones
704. Artful and Disciplined Dialogue for Today’s Wicked Problems (Terrace North)
Effective change leadership requires negotiating both open and disciplined participation, especially when addressing fuzzy situations such as peace or political reform. What if we treated social and policy issues as wicked problems, concerns that are never “solved,” but are satisfied through evolutionary progression? This approach to social design requires a mix of dialogue styles to enhance ideation and mitigate power in multi-stakeholder engagements. We present both Art of Hosting (open) and Structured Dialogue as a mix of participation models for problem-focused planning and decision-making. While rarely used together today, we explore why both perspectives help in today’s complex concerns in democratic decision-making.

Robert Davis
705. Facebook and Other Social Media as Civic Engagement Tools (Terrace East)
Social Media is a journalistic darling, often trumpeted as the new paradise or scorned as the source of society’s evils. This session will focus on how Toronto and other governments use social media to interact with communities and to facilitate effective dialogue and discussion.   Effective dialogue must be civil and respectful. The session will focus on how social media can foster civil dialogue, in contrast with other forms of electronic and more traditional interactions.  Discussion will include real-time examples of social media, a round-table of pros and cons and when not to use social media. Participants’ experiences are invited.

Joanna Ashworth
706. Hosting Dialogues on Harmony and Inclusion (St. George West)
Communities around British Columbia have been hosting powerful conversations on the meaning of multiculturalism and welcoming and inclusive communities. Their stories are invaluable as they offer living examples of what communities can do with imagination, leadership and the capacity to convene.  Simon Fraser University’s Dialogue Programs has been a co-leader with these communities and offered resources, training and support in the planning, hosting and documentation of over 15 community-based gatherings. Learn about the planning model, the ten lessons learned from process and experience some of the approaches and materials used. You will be invited to reflect on and share your own experiences and strategies for hosting community dialogue.

Miriam Lapp, Rachel Dhawan, Liz Armstrong, and others
707. Young Canadians @ the Polls: Engaging Youth in Canadian Democracy (St. George East)
This session is focused on a dialogue with youth about democratic and electoral participation and what’s important to youth in relation to how they are involved and participate in their communities and society more generally.  It will include a panel and interactive voting technology. It will explore with conference participants, particularly youth, the following themes:
Democracy and how youth see themselves within it
How engaged participating youth are in their community and society more generally?
Experiences in voting (When and why do youth vote? )
What would it take to engage youth more in the electoral process (at all levels of government)?
Elections Canada is hosting this session
L.Abokar
708. Role Reversal Activity: Play Therapy (St. David North)
Sustainable solutions can only be arrived at once we have a holistic understanding of an issue. However, often time the biggest impediment to full comprehension of a matter is that we are too narrow or restrictive in our approach of the subject. So, in discussing the matter we do not take into account all stakeholders, especially youth. Thus, failing to gaining very useful insight.   
Session facilitators will ask volunteers from the audience to take part in a role playing exercise where they will be assigned predetermined roles. Each role will have an accompanying responsibility and they will have to engage each other.
So by asking people to “put themselves in someone else shoes” they will be forced to think outside of the box. In do so, they will gain a more in depth perspective which will produce fruitful dialogue and create sustainable policies.

From 3:30-5:00

Tenant Engagment Reference Committee ( TERC)  (Wilkinson)
802. Tenants Can be Seen and Heard (St. David South)
In this interactive workshop participants will have an opportunity to learn about the process that tenants of Toronto Community Housing (TCH) and staff undertook to develop a new tenant engagement model.  A Committee called the Tenant Engagement Reference Committee (TERC) was formed to undertake the process.The history of tenant engagement at TCH is a story worth hearing.   Through a level of dialogue and deliberation between tenants and staff there has been an incredible transformation of engagement that has created an opportunity for tenant voices to be heard and enable them to sit at the table with staff to brainstorm together on how to better serve the needs of tenants.  This evolution of engagement has far reaching implications of how tenants and staff work together, and how an organization has opened its eyes to the fact that engagement results in tenants feeling empowered to be included in decisions that impact change in their community.
Miriam Wyman, Jacquie Dale and Jennifer Smith
803.  Is Dialogue Measuring Up To Our Expectations - The Challenge of Evaluation (St. David North)
Evaluation of dialogue and deliberation processes – and for public involvement initiatives in general – is a major challenge for the field. Not only is evaluation often ad hoc, if it is carried out at all, it is rarely a well-integrated component of the process.  And even when it is considered, there are countless questions about what should be evaluated and how.  This session is intended to bring together practitioners and researchers in a round-table format to talk about challenges, approaches, tools and other questions related to evaluating participatory processes and sharing what we are learning about evaluation.

Jason Diceman
804. Creating a Powerful Conference Consensus Document  (Colony Ballroom)
Throughout the conference we will be inviting participants to contribute ideas and opinions to answer the question: How do we use dialogue and deliberation to make stronger communities and healthier democracies?  In this hands-on workshop we will work with participant contributions to collaboratively draft a concise and powerful consensus document, which will include good practices, principles and what to avoid, inspiring success stories, key reference materials, and imagery that communicates and inspires.  We will be using small group deliberations and an advanced Dotmocracy technique to achieve this goal. Join us in this historic effort towards improving D & D in Canada and beyond.

Jeff Potts
805. A Public Health Response to Hepatitis: Let’s Talk About It (St. George West)
Stronger communities and healthier democracies drive effective public health interventions; and careful deliberation through conversation is the key to successful implementation of responsive public health policy. Dialogue and deliberation with stakeholders from across the country shaped the Government of Canada’s Renewed Public Health Response to Address Hepatitis C and other infectious disease issues -- changing how communities across the country think about disease prevention, health promotion and social determinants of health.  The Hepatitis C Program listened and learned that an effective response is a sustainable response that is grounded in communities poised to take action.  Let’s talk about it!  This session is hosted by the Hepatitis C Prevention, Support & Research Program, Community Acquired Infections Division, Centre for Communicable Diseases and Infection Control, Public Health Agency of Canada.

Adam Fritz, Jay Potter, Michelle Sanders, Tabatha Soltay
806. Overcoming Complexity through Collaboration: Web 2.0, Foresight and the canada@150 Experience (Lombard Suite)
This hands-on session will challenge participants to explore new ways of collaborating with each other. Participants will be presented with a problem that they will solve in small teams using web2.0 (no prior technical knowledge is required!). The experience will mirror the process of canada@150, a project that engaged 150 new public servants from across the country in a foresight process to develop a vision for the federal public service in 2017. Participants can expect to learn about the opportunities and challenges associated with using web2.0 to facilitate dialogue and collaborate through the simulation and conversations with canada@150 alumni.

Wallace Simpson
807. A Successful Journey: How Conversations and Dialogue Saved Our Structures. (Terrace West)
This interactive session will demonstrate the conversation thread that tenants implemented to achieve a successful strategy to solicit more than $300 Million in capital repair funding announcements from government. This conversation indicates tenants themselves playing a leading role in developing the campaign to deliver their message to other tenants, the public, politicians, and the media. The session will demonstrate through theatre the challenges, successes, and lessons learned by tenants and the SOS Campaign. Performers will provide the opportunity for a dialogue with the audience to demonstrate how this thread can translate into strategies for action in their local communities.

Michael Creek
808. Housing Matters - Building A Foundation From the Ground Up (Terrace East)
Homelessness can be the ultimate experience of disconnection – from community, from resources, from supports, and from virtually everything else that makes up “home”. One part of that massive disconnect is a sense of invisibility. Voices From the Street members, mental health professionals and other guests will speak to the topics of addictions and other mental health issues that have led many to homelessness and engage the audience in dialogue concerning the future. Special emphasis will be given to how engagement via open dialogue and deliberation of these issues can be effective in determining what is needed to proactively move housing providers forward.

Irene Brenner
809.  Community Builders Exchange – Creating Sustainable Communities (St. Patrick South)
The Community Builders Exchange (CBE) has been developed by residents with the support of United Way Toronto to ensure capacity building supports will continue within their communities for the long term. Through dialogue, deliberation, collaborative action and decision-making residents have identified what they need to become leaders and make a difference in their neighbourhoods. This session will be interactive allowing participants to learn how residents with diverse backgrounds came together to design a plan that will provide a roadmap for sustainable leadership and development.

5:15-5:45 – Why Not Ask Us? Youth Are Stakeholders  (Colony Ballroom)
This mixed-media presentation will showcase young people challenging decision-makers and those with power of influence, to answer the question: Why Not Ask Us? Given the devastation of the 2008 economic crisis on all members of society, young people feel it is more important than ever to ensure that they are considered as stakeholders in decisions which affect them now and in future. While they understand that many adults are challenged to communicate with youth on complex issues, they also understand that the practice of dialogue and deliberation could facilitate the communication. True youth engagement challenges both youth and adults to actively participate, so please join us for this entertaining and thought-provoking closing presentation on Saturday afternoon.