Blog #8

For a census decision making group or community to work there needs to be a group of people that are willing to compromise and keep and open mind. From the readings, I learned that a main component of a functioning census based community is trust between the members. The members have to be comfortable with one another enough to accept constructive criticism. You have to break away from your fears of what others will think of your opinion and know that growing to make a decision together will make you stronger and in the end your community stronger. The article on Conflict and Consensus states, "it will not be easy to create the kind of environment where differences can be expressed without fear or resentment. But it can be done. It will require tolerance and a willingness to experiment." I feel that perfectly describes the census community mind set. You also need to write a plan of what to want the overall purposes, including the groups' principles and values. The main values of a functioning consensus community are trust, respect, unity of purpose, nonviolence, self empowerment, cooperation, conflict resolution, commitment, active participation and patience. The strengths are that there is no hierarchy because the groups decides on the best for the community and everyone can have a say on what is truly best for the community. However, the weakness in having such a community I would think that it's hard to get a group of people together and actually make decisions that benefit the community more than themselves. People are very opinionated and it's hard to put that aside and think of what's best for everyone. You really do have to trust and be comfortable with the people in your community for it to succeed.