Greater Clark Foundation Awards Scholarship for Harwood Lab

Five selected for innovators training

Posted: Friday, November 13, 2015 11:13 am

Special to the Sun

Five area residents have been selected to represent the Greater Clark region at a “Public Innovators Lab” Dec. 1-3 in Washington, D.C., where they will learn ways to engage communities in achieving conditions for long-term change.

The $2,500 per participant cost of the training and travel will be covered by The Greater Clark Foundation (GCF).

The selected participants are:

— Rachel Alexander, executive director, Main Street Winchester

— Brian Carpenter, manager, Grace Coffee, Café and Bakery

— Cora Heffner, director of Community Education, Clark County Public Schools

— Joseph Miller, director, Rowland Arts Center for Teens

— Chana Tetzlaff, priest in Charge, Emmanuel Episcopal Church

The lab will be conducted by The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, an independent nonprofit that teaches, coaches and inspires people and organizations to change how communities work to solve pressing problems.

Greater Clark’s participants will learn to:

— identify community issues rooted in people’s shared aspirations and build public will for action;

— develop strategies that align with local context;

— create community conditions that enable change;

— forge relationships with partners;

— build networks for innovation and learning;

— adopt metrics to gauge progress; and

— cultivate can-do narratives in their organizations and the community.

“Each of the 16 individuals who completed the application is highly capable and more than qualified to represent the Greater Clark region at the Harwood Lab, and we intend to engage everyone who applied in a meaningful, grassroots way to help our community achieve its long-term goals,” Jen Algire, GCF president and CEO, said. “The selected participants took the opportunity to share in their applications their deep affection for our community, their pragmatic, results-oriented personalities, their selflessness and their willingness to take and manage meaningful risks.”

The participants will help GCF determine if the Harwood Institute’s “Turning Outward Model” can be used in the region, and will become leaders in the local effort to enhance the four conditions that are required for community change: capacity, collaboration, communication and cohesion, Algire said. They were selected by a committee that included three GCF board members and two community volunteers, in a process involving a blind initial evaluation followed by in-person interviews.

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