I started Impact Greensboro over the weekend and am excited to have the opportunity to work with such a diverse group of people. The program last for a year and it’s a huge time commitment, but the benefits will be well worth it.
During our Saturday session (seven hrs) one of the short group exercises (my group had six people) had to do with coming up with a symbol that represents the word “community.” Not what we think Greensboro is, but just the word community in general. After lots of scribbles and several minutes of conversation we had an “ah ha” moment, as I like to call them, when someone blurted out the word “puzzle piece.” At that point it seemed to click 
for all of us and we thought a symbol portraying a puzzle would be a good place to start. The rationale was that communities are extremely diverse, but always seem to fit together. Anything come to mind for you?
The second part of the exercise was to jot down behaviors and values that we thought were important for a community to have. Then we had to do the exact opposite and come up with behaviors and values that could have a negative impact on a community. Click the photo to the left to see some of the words we came up with. This part of the exercise was limited to about five minutes which is why there isn’t an abundance of words.
I think it was a good opening exercise that allowed the various groups to engage in conversation and work together.
Impact Greensboro is obviously closed to participants at this point, but if you are interested in taking part in a worthwhile program I highly recommend City Academy (Application deadline is July 17). I did it last year and thought it was a phenomenal experience. You learn about all aspects of local government and you even get to shoot gun at the GPD range… did I mention you also get to ride around in a fire truck? It’s a great learning experience to say the least.
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