I've created a web site to archive all issues of this journal. You can find the entire series, along with photographs (and probably some documents before we're done) at http://www.dennisdeery.com/wrlp.

You're receiving this email because I've taken the liberty of signing you up for this journal. You can expect to receive emails about every other month, following each of our 11 seminars over two years. If you wish to stop receiving these emails, please hit Reply, type remove and send the message - you will be automatically removed from the list. If you choose to keep receiving the email, and would like more detail on any topics covered, please don't hesitate to drop me an email. I look forward to any feedback you might care to offer!

Dennis Deery
dennis@irose.com
 

Okay, if you're like everyone else I've mentioned this seminar to, your first reaction is "What the heck are you thinking going to Eau Claire, Wisconsin to discuss diversity?" Well, this seminar was about all kinds of diversity, not just racial diversity (though Eau Claire does have that too).

We started our first evening with a recap of some of the diversity issues we had covered during our regional seminar in the south. We followed this with a group discussion of issues that came up for each of us during our completion of a diversity awareness profile and interviews we each performed.

The first full-day of the seminar began with an introduction to storytelling. Most of our seminars have contained some form of group presentation, and this one would be no different. Our style of presentation for this seminar would be storytelling, giving us a lot more freedom to decide how to present our topic.

Next up we did an exercise to illustrate the diversity in our group, forming small groups in the conference room based on attributes called out by the seminar chairs, such as economic status, education, etc. The goal of this was to get us all thinking about diversity as something more than just racial diversity, which was a recurring theme of this seminar.

Dan Veroff, the director of the Applied Population Laboratory at UW-Madison, presented some information about Wisconsin from Census 2000. Following Dan's presentation, our next speaker joined us during a brief break. Fariba Pendleton, a professor with UW-Extension and a WRLP alumnus, came into the room dressed in traditional clothing from her home country, Iran. A couple of members of our group greeted her and tried to engage her in conversation - Ms. Pendleton spoke to them in her native language. Afterwards, our compatriots confessed to feeling pretty uncomfortable, which of course was Ms. Pendleton's point. She gave a very interesting talk on her perspective as a Middle Eastern Muslim living and working in Wisconsin. Even working in the somewhat diverse university system she has faced occasional challenges due to cultural differences.

Wednesday afternoon, we broke up into small groups for community visits. Each group visited a couple of agencies or organizations in the Eau Claire area that are working with diverse populations. The group I was a member of visited Community Table, a local free-meal site, and Five Star Dairy, a dairy farm west of Eau Claire that employs Hispanic workers. At Community Table, I found myself in the unusual position of being the overdressed outsider when I tried to sit and have lunch with some clients. They were naturally suspicious when I tried to chat with them to learn why they were eating at Community Table. A man about 50 years old was there with two kids around 18 years old. The youngsters, a man and woman, were both basically homeless and staying with the older man. They were thankful for meals at Community Table, and often went without meals when they were unable to eat at Community Table. All three were unemployed, and talked about their difficulties in finding and keeping work in a town like Eau Claire, with limited public transportation. We also had a good chat with the director of Community Table. She told us about their reliance on volunteers, and problems with limited funds. They struggle to provide enough service for the need that they see, and fortunately have a solid core of volunteers to help. Like most non-profits though, they have concerns about volunteer burnout when the need exceeds what they can provide.

At Five Star Dairy, we met Armando and his son, who had come to Wisconsin from Mexico to make money to support their family. Armando previously had a business in Mexico, but couldn't make enough money to support the family. After a stint in California, he came to Wisconsin to work on a Christmas tree farm. At the end of his first season there, he was hired to work at the dairy. He's shown a talent for working with dairy cows, and has become the head herdsman at the dairy. This has allowed him to hire several other family members, including his son. The dairy now has 11 Hispanic workers handling their milking. We were fortunate to have someone in our group who spoke Spanish, as Armando and his son spoke very little English. Armando and his son seemed to have a very good relationship with Lee Jensen, the owner of the dairy, and Mr. Jensen spoke very highly of their work. They both felt that they were making good money. They remain very focused on their reason for being in Wisconsin, and spend very little time socializing or even leaving the farm, choosing instead to work as much overtime as they could. They both have a goal of making enough money to return home to Mexico and start their own businesses.

We returned to our hotel and took some time to work on our storytelling presentation for later in the week. Finally, we had an after-dinner presentation from Gordon Thayer of the American Indian Community Development Center in the Twin Cities. Mr. Thayer's organization works to provide social services. For example, they have for some time provided drug rehabilitation services for the city of Minneapolis. The really interesting thing to me was their emphasis on making their activities sustainable. They are currently setting up a property management company that will provide affordable housing, as well as selling and managing market-value real-estate to create profits to support their ventures. Mr. Thayer was able to build a large organization pretty rapidly, and I expect they'll be a non-profit to watch as they work to generate their own funding instead of relying on grants.

Thursday morning we had our small-group storytelling presentations. Our group did a little song-and-dance number to tell the story of Armando coming to Wisconsin to support his family. (No, I didn't subject anyone to my singing!) All the groups took full advantage of the license granted by the storytelling format, providing a lot of information in really humorous and enjoyable ways.

Next up was a presentation on poverty and economic diversity, probably the most common kind of diversity we all face day-to-day. This was followed by a great presentation on generational diversity, especially in the workplace. I think we all learned a lot about how different age groups view the world, and we discovered the reasoning behind lots of differences within our group. Some small group discussions of case studies on generational differences really highlighted the different perspectives our group members bring to the table.

For dinner we were joined by several WRLP alumni. One of the people we met, we would learn, was a main driver behind Wisconsin's marital property laws. As a farm wife, she discovered that Wisconsin's law didn't recognize her ownership of anything purchased in her husband's name, including the family farm. After educating herself on the issue, she spent something like 8 years traveling the state, speaking about the issue to anyone who would listen. Through her perseverance, the state eventually passed marital property legislation. This was one of those "WRLP moments" where we got a chance to meet an ordinary person who has had a tremendous impact on the world, one of those examples we can all draw on for strength.

After dinner we went to the Chippewa Valley Museum to see the play Living Paj Ntaub. Paj Ntaub means "story quilt" in the Hmong language, the beautifully sewn tapestries that the Hmong use to record their stories. The play was simple storytelling by a young Hmong man and woman, repeating stories of Hmong people who had settled in Wisconsin. The play was heart-rending as the actors told of people leaving their homes and families, fleeing to Thailand to save their lives. Some Hmong families have been in refugee camps in Thailand for over 20 years, and even now some Hmong are migrating to the U.S. - Menomonie is expecting the arrival of several Hmong families this summer. In a Q & A session after the play, the actors described how many stories are being lost because Hmong is a spoken language only, which is why the story quilts are used to record stories. Since migrating to the U.S., many of the younger generation are not learning to speak Hmong, and as a result many stories from their forebearers are not being passed on. We ended the evening with some time to tour the museum, including a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of their new farm exhibit.

Friday morning we started with some games with Tim Pflieger, a leadership trainer and motivational speaker from Door County. Tim gave what was easily one of the most insightful and educational presentations of the entire 2-year program. The games we played were typical team-building exercises, requiring communication, working together, patience, thought. And we failed miserably. The group dynamic quickly spiraled out of control, and this in a group that really is quite close. As one example, we turned one of the games into a competition, where nothing about competing was mentioned in the rules. We could have all worked together and all succeeded, but instead we worked to defeat other teams. When Tim evaluated our performance, I think we all saw how much our behavior had mimicked the behavior of groups in our own communities working on policy issues, much to the detriment of all involved.

Tim then gave a presentation on how to read body language and other personality traits to understand more about people and help to bring them into discussions. In the talk that followed, Tim quietly modeled his ideas as each person spoke. I learned an incredible amount from Tim in a short time - if you have a chance to attend any presentations by him, jump at the chance.

Finally, we had a presentation from Arlen Leholm, the new dean of UW-Extension. Dr. Leholm talked about his study of high-performance teams in the corporate world. After lunch and reflections, we headed for home.

For more information about the Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program, check out their web site at http://www.uwex.edu/ces/wrlp/.