IndyTalks began last year. The series website describes IndyTalks as “a collaboration dedicated to fostering a sense of community through respectful and creative civic dialogue.” It’s a fascinating concept: gathering a loose network of diverse organizations (educational, arts and cultural, social service, etc.) and encouraging a few organizations at a time to partner on “creative” event formats addressing a particular year-long theme (in 2011, Indy as a “Super City” for the Super Bowl). So, theoretically, a common theme and a common dedication to creative formats for civic engagement bind the series events together.

I attended last night’s series event at Christian Theological Seminary: a forum reflecting on the city’s gifts and challenges from the perspectives of relative newcomers (for a list of new-to-Indy panelists, visit the seminary’s website). Discussion ranged from public transportation needs and excellent restaurant venues to food deserts and asset-based community development.

I like that such public conversations are happening, and I like that local leaders are seeking to connect, sustain, and further these kinds of public conversations rather than allowing great civic engagement moments to remain isolated and their participants to remain disconnected. The networking of related public conversations is promising from multiple angles: marketing, organizational synergy, and participant buzz to name just a few.

If a “Super City” has abundant venues for diverse neighbors to engage each other and build relationships; and if true collaboration creates opportunities for diverse organizations to risk sharing a common long-range vision for their communities; then I think IndyTalks has the potential for inviting its participants (organizational as well as individual) into some “super” possibilities for the city we share. If you can, check out the last IndyTalks event of the year, which just so happens to be a pre-festival event for the 2011 Spirit and Place Festival: “Dressing Indianapolis” at the Indianapolis Museum of Art on Tuesday, November 1 at 7 pm. Let’s keep exploring the possibilities!

On WFYI this morning, in addition to the usual corporate challenges and special “thank you” gifts of public media membership drives, speakers mentioned that with each pledge, Peapod online grocery service would donate 2 pounds of food to Second Helpings. I liked that. As if 2 pounds going to food rescue and feeding hungry people were every bit as attractive to donors as a special “thank you” perk … and as if it were every bit as attractive to fundraisers as cash contributions to public media. I liked that.

A donation to WFYI is “good deed” or “good cause” enough. However, when involvement in an event like a membership drive piles on other “goods” – deeds, causes, effects – it arguably reaches another level. Multiple but isolated good deeds give way to creating a culture of generosity and mutual benefit. Do you see the difference? There are many good causes and good organizations doing good work, but there’s a synergy when causes and organizations and people collaborate and find ways for their good work to work together. It can change the game. It can change the culture.

I don’t mean to offer food rescue components as the panacea for all events and fundraisers. I do mean to say that this food rescue component in WFYI’s fall membership drive evoked a culture-changer moment for me this morning, and I’m appreciative.

(Go pledge at the WFYI website today if you haven’t already!)

The Indianapolis school’s website explains the Work Study Program simply: “Businesses contract with the Program to outsource their clerical jobs for an annual fee. Student-workers are put into job-sharing teams and their academic schedules are modified so that five students job share a full-time entry level job without missing class.” The benefits of these work study relationships, however, quickly exceed funding.

“We need to have kids who are educated and driven so we can compete. It makes economic sense. The businesses understand that,” explained Director of the Providence Cristo Rey Work Study Program in Indianapolis, Rhett Cochran. “Being put into corporate environments and being given responsibilities, students have to prioritize. They have to manage their time wisely. They have to do all sorts of things that adults are doing.” This is a leg up for post-secondary education. Of 24 Cristo Rey schools nationally, every one of the 1,116 seniors who graduated last year was accepted into college.

Lacie Hacker, Web Services Administrator with Shiel Sexton Co. Inc., spoke with me about her experience supervising students with the Work Study Program. Though corporate responsibilities may seem intimidating to entering freshman, Hacker explained, “We don’t just throw you in the deep end. We support you.” She had a striking moment meeting the mother of a once-shy student she supervised: “The student’s mom couldn’t stop talking about how since he started learning these skills in our office, he’s started coming out of his shell and dreaming about what he wants to do with his life. What we do here really makes a difference.”

Getting these different perspectives on the Corporate Work Study Program, what struck me was the awareness at multiple levels – administration, corporate leadership, direct supervision, students and families – of why they were doing what they were doing. People were able to articulate the difference they had observed first-hand.

August Mack’s President Glanders offered this to businesses considering involvement in the Corporate Work Study program: “This mission is very powerful. If we do our jobs right, it’s a total game changer for lives, not only for the students but for their families. It becomes a very sustainable model from there on out.”

Now that is social impact!

Take the Dalai Lama, for example. Looking back on 2010, when Miner worked with partner organizations in Central Indiana to bring the Dalai Lama to Conseco Fieldhouse, he calls the success of that event “a bit of a viral thing.” Word of the event spread well enough to attract 9,500 people and raise $76,000 for the Interfaith Hunger Initiative. Granted, the presence alone of an internationally-known figure such as the Dalai Lama made this Conseco event a “visible public event.” However, Miner also attributes the attraction to and visibility of that event to a planning-phase connection of the right people, skills and networks: e.g. people who knew the legal/insurance aspects of event planning, people with contacts among various local Tibetan and Buddhist communities, and people who worked effective communication channels among their organizations’ own constituencies. The early phases of event planning connected enough organizers with enough investment in what they were organizing (whether from a hunger angle, a spirituality angle, from devotion to the Dalai Lama himself, or due to someone/something else) to network far and wide on behalf of that event.

That’s a lot of legwork.

Which brings us to another lesson which Dave Miner says he has learned: provide opportunities for action. In his experience developing programs that reach out and connect with the community and with new constituencies on behalf of his organizations, Miner says there is power in (1) the number of people who have a significant role and investment in putting an event together and (2) the opportunities that participants have at the event to engage in actions that contribute to the cause, as well. He gave the example of the interfaith prayer service and service event at Gleaners Food Bank on September 11, 2011 (see this blog’s September 12, 2011 post). Processing canned food donations, packing food boxes for senior citizens, creating artwork for a series of murals to be displayed around the city, and writing notes of encouragement to enclose in the food boxes – participants of most ages and physical abilities at the 9/11 event had options for taking action together.

When planners and attendees of visible public events get to actively connect with each other and with the issues, there’s a huge potential for success. Of those successes and what connects him personally to this work, Miner remarks: “When we see people making connections, people becoming more passionate about a cause – for me, that’s a great satisfaction.”

Visit the Interfaith Hunger Initiative website to check out IHI public events for October 2011.

“It is about increasing the light and so decreasing the darkness,” said musical director Yuval Ron. “That is why we’re here with you tonight.” Punctuating music with story and reflection, he explained that human beings cannot fight darkness with darkness. We must choose another, more creative response.

Celebrating peace, increasing the light, creating new ways – the event sounded these tones again and again. Sponsors gave opening remarks about why each embraced the crossing of cultural and religious divides. An International Day of Peace documentary cast a vision for what just one day of going at life differently could accomplish. The music blended sounds from many countries and cultures, not to discount differences but to highlight beautiful stories from each. And yes, a bunch of us even got up, held hands, and danced the “debka” (a middle eastern folk dance) around the hall. The mix of sponsors, mix of performers, the resulting mix of attendees, and the mix of media kept punching the theme: move beyond the expected divisions so we can connect people and create new ways of living together well.

Congratulations to local partners who took a risk on innovative programming (visit the Journey Through the Middle East series site for more on the program), and congratulations to the visiting musicians who continue to take risks in their own innovative art (e.g. visit the Yuval Ron site and percussionist Jamie Papish’s site for more on the musicians’ work).

The Yuval Ron Ensemble involves musicians from Arab, Jewish and Christian traditions who use their art to explore the connections among their different Middle Eastern traditions. As I said, I’ve seen this ensemble before. I’ve been impressed with how they draw audience members into a shared experience. Last November, when the Ensemble performed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, those Arab, Jewish and Christian musicians who have found ways to do art together actually succeeded in getting their Muslim, Jewish, Christian and atheist audience members to stand up and form a circle through the aisles of the Toby Theater. Audience members may have been strangers to one another before that night, but they ended that night literally holding hands and dancing together. It was quite a sight. It was quite a glimpse of what a single evening could do to break down some of the typical barriers between strangers.

So, I’m curious: what kind of program do a library, an art center, and a bunch of religious people develop in order to impact their shared community in the name of peace? We’ll see. (You can see, too – the event is free and open to the public, so come!).

This workshop came on the week immediately following the 10^th anniversary of 9/11. It was a week when many still carried deep awareness of the increasing religious diversity and sectarian violence of our world. In this context, organizers gathered a multi-cultural, multi-religious mix to lead a workshop on the meanings of planting trees and caring for the earth. “We are the caretakers of God’s creation,” said Michael “Mikal” Saahir, Imam of Nur-Allah Islamic Center in Indianapolis, offering a perspective which echoes across Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh and many other faith traditions represented in Central Indiana.

The Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc. website explains that the organization “unites people to build community and transform public spaces through aesthetic and environmental improvement.” This program united a cross-section of Hoosiers in an elegant way. Participants explored perspectives that were similar as well as different by focusing on an issue that they agreed was meaningful: public spaces and environmental health. Organizers created a space that was open for dialogue, communicating across lines of difference that often divide our communities. They encouraged participants to reflect on the social impact of their own faiths and lifestyles and to name the meanings of the social and environmental impact they themselves were making.

Wow. I left energized to make some meaningful decisions. I suspect that was the point.

Don’t most of us want that – a sense of purpose?

“Goodwill Industries is a social enterprise that offers opportunities, provides services, and leverages its resources with those of others to improve the education, skills, employability, and economic self-sufficiency of adults and the future employability of young people.” So says the website, and it’s that “social enterprise” self-understanding which shines. Numbers abound on the website pages and fact sheets. Goodwill does its research and develops programs based on proven results. But, something else comes through: the people. People serving each other, people focusing on each other’s potentials, business centering on people: that’s the “social enterprise” concept. Business models apply to philanthropic, people-enriching ends.

A distinct culture lives and thrives at Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana. I’m still figuring out how. I’ll keep exploring. You could, too. It would be worth the visit. In the meanwhile, visit the website and read the stories. Notice alongside all the numbers and concepts how many peoples’ stories the website tells. After all, if the proof is in the pudding, then a social enterprise is in its people. Check it out.

Answering those questions could take volumes. It could take entire careers. I would have to say, though, that these questions and this blog solidified for me on September 11, 2011.

I was on the southwest side of Indianapolis, sitting in one of the vast warehouse spaces of Gleaners Food Bank. Over 300 people had gathered: people of Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Native-American and Sikh faiths; people of African-American, European, Indian, Middle-Eastern, Native-American and Turkish descent; people across a spectrum of skin tones and clothing designs, demeanors and ages and political affiliations. The list goes on, and I was struck quite simply by the diversity. Each of these people had chosen to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 by participating in an interfaith event of service, packing boxes of food for seniors. According to sponsors, it was an opportunity to “come together to make a difference for hungry people.”

The occasion was a day of national grieving for all that was lost: lives, a sense of security, hopes and dreams. The response of local organizations was a program that acknowledged the losses while also focusing on gain: the abundant resources our community has to offer when diverse people gather for the common cause of feeding hungry neighbors. By print, web and blog, partner organizations spread the word among their constituencies: come push the boundaries of difference that divide our society and create a positive impact for Central Indiana on a very special day.

Simple and powerful.

Kudos to Christian Theological Seminary, Gleaners Food Bank, the Interfaith Hunger Initiative, the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation, the International Interfaith Initiative, the Muslim Alliance of Indiana, the Worship Studio Indy and many other partner organizations for a well-crafted, well-communicated program. Thanks for the inspiration.