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4.A. - Page 64 of 98 <br />PICK <br />PENINSULA CONFLICT RESOLUTION CENTER <br />Discussion and Next Steps <br />The intent behind the community dialogues and small group discussion was twofold: showcase <br />the community's voices that generally get marginalized within the decision-making process and <br />help the communities feel empowered within the political process to voice their concerns to <br />encourage solutions to address these issues of potential inequity in the city. As a neutral third <br />party, PCRC understands that community engagement is not the same for all social sectors. That <br />is why PCRC's expertise is engaging communities where they feel most empowered, listening to <br />understand their experiences, and situating engagement with a cultural humility lens aligned with <br />the Principles of Engagement. Despite the sensitivity of these issues, the communities trusted the <br />authentic collaboration, which was captured by the positive process evaluation feedback <br />collected in the polls (Table 4 and 5) <br />Challenges <br />Attendance with particular communities, such as youth and Spanish speakers, was a challenge. <br />However, a fair amount of effort was put into getting these sessions well attended (see Appendix <br />A). Despite the effort, for the youth session, 61 registered and 43 attended. And for the Spanish <br />speaking session, 30 people registered, and 26 attended. <br />Nevertheless, to encourage participation, PCRC facilitated small and large group settings to <br />reach different parts of these communities with each meeting. PCRC facilitated these dialogues <br />(online and in-person) and gatherings after work hours to make attendance as convenient as <br />possible. To address concerns around low attendance rates among the Latino communities and <br />youth population, PCRC extended its outreach to community organizations that serve these <br />communities with the intent of creating effective channels of communication to relay <br />information to the community members. Finally, PCRC made extensive efforts to translate all <br />outreach materials to both Spanish and have simultaneous interpretation at small group meetings <br />in an attempt to eliminate any language barriers and maximize participation. <br />Next Steps <br />The initial input for the sessions is promising for the culminating community sessions (both in <br />terms of engagement and feedback), which the city has designated as the place where the <br />findings from the first six community sessions will be presented. Despite the limitation of <br />virtually doing the community dialogues, the community has been overwhelmingly supportive <br />and engaged in the sessions (see Table 4 and Table 5). <br />In making sense of the various themes from the issues that were brought up in the small groups, <br />the following topics were most frequent: (1) the need for more social resources and programs as <br />supposed to police presence, (2) more transparency and accountability, (3) better representation <br />and diversity in city leadership, in particular the police, and (4) the need to better support schools <br />with resources and funding, especially in low-income areas. <br />The community is looking forward to the polls and themes of the first six sessions in the <br />culminating session and, most importantly, the potential policy and social change that may come <br />from it. Though they are skeptical of the city, as suggested in their response to the poll question, <br />"I am concerned the City will make symbolic or minimal gestures of change regarding systemic <br />racism, but no meaningful change will actually occur." The majority polled (75%) responded <br />12 <br />