As promised, here’s some of the back-story about how folks in North Central Washington are reclaiming the civic stage — and countering what Rufus Woods called “the social, political and economic malaise that infects our country.”
One of the instigators of this positive revolution, Nancy Warner, told me how they got themselves organized — without a lot of hoopla — at the local coffee house.
We have our think tank, which is Caffe Mela. We have a kind of ongoing meeting at Caffe Mela. Ben and I will go, and then Rufus will come in. Sometimes Joan is part of it. You know them, and then there’s Cheryl who you have yet to meet.
You mean this is just informal, and you know that if you stop by, they’re there? This is at a coffee shop?
Yes, it’s the coffee shop in Wenatchee where we have had many power meetings about shaping the future of North Central Washington.
It’s informal and develops without an agenda? Just people you trust and have some common interests with, and whatever topic shows up?
Yep. We have an amazing team of people.
I’ve never worked with people like this. It’s like we are such a tight sync in our perspective about how central success is, and how we’re basically trying to recreate a storytelling culture in which everyone is a player and has a voice.
We have a really strong foundation. With that strong foundation and culture, we’re able to spend a lot of time thinking creatively about how to get there and promote that.
Nancy told me more about how they work together, which seems to me exactly the kind of world I want – and a process that is ideal. (The modern day version of the “old-boys” lunch?)
Rufus, of course, is there right with us. He’s also juggling the paper and all the reality of that business. We do the nonprofit, and he’s doing the for-profit juggling act. These two balls are increasingly looking like a whole.
That is actually what we saw when we were in Little Rock. We got just a glimpse of it at that first workshop. There is something there with a nonprofit focused on gathering successes, elevating people’s success and tying it to the ground like we do.
There is something about that in combination with a regional, for-profit paper. We’re still puzzling it out, but I think we’re getting closer all the time.
Talk some more about the culture your small group shares. You’ve said you share a recognition of possibilities, a sense of looking at what’s positive and what’s working.
We believe in the possibility of change. We believe we can actually have an effect.
We start our conversations at such a high level. We’re really productive. There is a high level of trust and respect. There’s also a high level of adventure. It’s like we are very open to risk, I would say.
I’m having a really big adventure here. I couldn’t have dreamed this up. I just love what I’m doing. I think it’s so interesting. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out exactly, but I know that it’s a really strong moment that we’re a part of.
We’re trying to do something bigger than any of us are. I think we’re actually aware that we can do something. We are doing something pretty significant. It’s heady stuff.
You said, “We believe in the possibility of change,” and then, “We believe we can have an effect.” From my way of looking at it, those are the two most powerful ingredients to really being able to create something that is beyond-the-boundaries.
About this little group of two, three or four people meeting at the coffee shop in an ad hoc, informal, unstructured way … Do you see this as the seed of what you hope to see more in the community?
It could be. We all have a very deep respect for the possibilities in everyone.
We don’t think about the conservation community, the business community and the ag community as separate anymore. We don’t even talk about them as being all that separate anymore, which is different. People are used to having things in boxes.
What’s so curious to me is the serendipity of it and how that’s really valued. There is almost the sense that you know you must be doing something important if it’s working out so well like that. It’s also a picture of small city that’s very attractive to me. It’s the fact that you’re compact enough that that can happen.
It is pretty cool. To think about the future, one our strategies in our project from the beginning has been to infiltrate the coffee shop network.
I’m sure this happens in Ohio, too. When I say that, I mean that farmers traditionally will meet at the corner gas station or the cafe. The farmers talk to other farmers and they complain about things. That’s how they understand the world. It’s through their coffee shop talk.
They’re critical. They’ll celebrate things. They have a very tight social network in many rural communities that happens in the coffee shops.
We want to change the tenor of the coffee-shop conversations.
And not just have ag talking to ag, but have community talking to community. We want to have it be about positive change and possibilities.
That’s one of our strategies. It’s to recreate Caffe Melas all over North Central Washington.
We’re looking for other coffee shops besides Caffe Mela. It’s intentional. Where are these story nodes around the region? Where do people gather? Where we can we build on that good energy?
Thank you, Nancy, for letting us in on your conversation of What could be? It’s clear that it was born of what you have going for you.
This kind of talk can give me even more of a charge than pouring another cup of Columbian or English Breakfast.
Ahhh…
Jim
Related links:
Catch up with Part 1 of this article.
The full story of the Success Summit — and their next steps — will be available soon at http://www.irisncw.org
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