 ToP Trainers hold up cards to share brief reflections on the progress made during a virtual planning meeting. Four new Technology of Participation (ToP) online training courses launched this past month, a major milestone in a months-long journey to translate the facilitation methods authentically to the virtual world. We're proud to offer a small selection of courses available now--ToP Facilitation Methods (TFM) Online, ToP Strategic Planning (TSP) Online, Shift Happens: Design Principles for a Virtual World, and Action Planning Practice Lab on Miro. All the online courses are designed to train participants to apply ToP facilitation skills virtually.
 Matt Cardoni at the Third Annual Uptown Garden Walk in 2018. I feel like the [ICA] team consistently cares about the planet and the community, and are willing to put their time and effort into making them better. I trust their intentions and their actions, which is a rare thing. Matt Cardoni is founder of Green Lightning Marketing, a digital marketing consultancy that works with nonprofit organizations, mission-driven businesses and educational institutions. He has been a member of Chicago Sustainability Leaders Network for six years, helped launch and organize the Uptown Garden Walk, and has connected numerous digital marketing students and volunteers with ICA.
 The new development by Sarah's Circle will cover 40% of the lot at 4747 N Sheridan Rd and provide supportive housing for women. The Ecumenical Institute (EI), ICA’s sister organization that owns and operates ICA GreenRise, has signed a sales agreement to sell 40% of our parking lot at 4747 N Sheridan Rd to Sarah’s Circle, an Uptown-based nonprofit organization that provides a continuum of programs and supportive housing to help women permanently end their homelessness.
 Toni Anderson at the Sacred Keepers Youth (SKY) Garden in Bronzeville during a CSLN bike ride in 2019. [ICA] methods challenge the internal narrative that a person is holding that they may have to inspect to become available to a greater good or a collective movement, and it's rare that those two things get challenged in the same way. Toni Anderson is Founder and Executive Director of Sacred Keepers Sustainability Lab, a Chicago-based non-profit dedicated to teaching youth to inherit the earth through environmental STEM education, sustainable service learning initiatives, and youth-driven social philanthropy. She has been a member of Chicago Sustainability Leaders Network since it formed in 2013, is working toward certification in our Technology of Participation methods, and joined our board in June, 2020.
 The Kemper Insurance building that has housed ICA since the 1970s was rebranded as the ICA GreenRise Uptown Learning Laboratory in 2014. We’re honored to announce that ICA GreenRise has received a major State Capital Grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) to invest in renovating key building features. The $150,000 award will support upgrades to the building’s fire safety system, part of a roster of capital improvements planned as part of the GreenRise Renovation Project (GRRP).
 Our Program team leads co-grantees of the Listen. Lead. Share. clean energy campaign through a virtual training on ToP facilitation methods. “Folks in this group wear a lot of hats—community leaders, community organizers, parents, pastors. When you come into those different roles you bring different skills and focuses and things that you’re trying to do with a group, and facilitation is no different,” said ICA staffer Samantha Sainsbury to a group of organizers leading efforts to expand clean energy opportunities to Illinoisans.
Funded by a grant through the Energy Foundation and Illinois Environmental Council, ICA partnered with the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition (ICJC) to offer a training series in our Technology of Participation (ToP) facilitation methods to fellow grantees engaged in the Listen. Lead. Share. (LLS) campaign.  Our team leads a pilot session of Shift Happens, a new virtual facilitation course for designing participatory events. The Technology of Participation (ToP) methods were distilled from decades of experience facilitating meaningful, transformative experiences in community. The methods have been applied throughout the world, in cities, towns, and villages. They have been used at every scale from the United Nations and Fortune 500 companies down to staff meetings and family gatherings. For most of its history, ToP has thrived in-person, face-to-face.
 More than 100 people representing nine different countries participated in the virtual Sojourn. For years, the focus of the ICA Social Research Center (SRC) has been to translate our massive collection of written and recorded material to a comprehensive and accessible website. Throughout that journey of digitizing documents and building websites, the dedicated team of volunteers also began exploring tools for working together virtually. By last fall, the team was reconsidering the in-person meetings that had brought colleagues to Chicago twice each year for the past decade.
 ICA staffer Caitlin Sarro introduces the four pillars of the Clean Energy Jobs Act to a group at Bronzeville Neighborhood Farm in 2019. We’re excited to announce that ICA will be working with the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition on the Listen. Lead. Share. (LLS) campaign! Last year, we joined a cohort of organizations working to educate the public about clean energy and hear feedback from residents about recommendations for the upcoming energy bill for Illinois.
 The community mural in memory of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN. Photo by Wade Agboola. Mural by Cadex Herrera, Greta McLain, and Xena Goldman. If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation We at the Institute of Cultural Affairs and the Ecumenical Institute are infuriated and deeply distressed by the murder of Black people by law enforcement and the continued racial violence being directed at the Black community over and over again on a daily basis.
We stand in solidarity with protesters, activists, and organizers expressing outrage at the long history of systemic racism that continues to perpetuate injustice with complicity by public officials. |
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