VISIONING MEETING IDEAS
We will have our next Visioning Meeting on June 22nd (location TBD). Let's use this forum to start brainstorming for that discussion. Please post your thoughts on EXCO's mission and execution of its mission here. Where do you see EXCO five years from now? What should be our big dreams for the future, and what can our strategies be for materializing them? In relation to these goals, what are your more immediate concerns, questions, and suggestions about EXCO's organization, community outreach, publicity strategies, etc.?
Comments
Concerns/Goals/Values
Hi All!
I am most concerned about assuring that we build up are existing chapters and make them strong, most notably putting time into developing and supporting new organizers and retaining existing ones. Finding better ways to have continuous reflection seems like a really positive first step on this path.
I am optimistic that this structure document will help stabalize us and promote strong chapters specifically by: 1) Setting up roles at each chapter, 2) Getting people to coordinate across chapters, and 3) Getting serious about fundraising, events, and facilitator support at a citywide level.
If we do so I am super excited about where we can go in the next 2 years, becoming a deeply rooted, diverse institution that supports and builds communities and movements...and believe that creating Cores, community chapters (and more college chapters!), EXCO Zones, etc, can facilitate this.
The values I would like to follow are summarized below:
1) Education should be free
2) Education should build upon and support the growth of community resources
3) Education should be a force for social equality and justice
4) Education should be in itself a good (as opposed to a necessary, expensive piece of paper)
As Audrey Lorde would say—education is not a luxury—and I think the above principals articulate why that is so. However, I think we need to go through the process of discovering in what ways this is the case in practice, and that means having the time, organization, and resources, to put these principals (or something like them) at the center of what we do.
That's all and very curious to hear everyone's thoughts!
db