Our Work

Engage Winona works in three areas: We bring folks together to imagine transformative projects and bold ideas for the community’s future; we reflect these voices of our community through creative storytelling; and we provide the training, support and resources to help folks turn those ideas into reality. 

All of Engage Winona’s conversations, programs, workshops and events are free and available to all, with a special focus on serving historically marginalized populations. 

Here is a snapshot of our work, centered on three themes of access, voice, and power.

Access

Intentional conversations and events.

Engage Winona convenes around meaningful issues, from community-wide conversations and events to dialogues with diverse groups and populations. We use deep listening, expert facilitation, and interactive activities to get folks having fun, building relationships, and imagining the community’s future. We also work with The Joy Labs on community engagement projects.

Consulting services.

Engage Winona helps local government units, private institutions, and organizations build or revitalize connections to their communities through outreach, analysis, programming, strategies, and other engagement tools. We build and execute inclusive processes that drive convergence on complex issues.

Building networks for good.

Engage Winona connects people and organizations doing similar work together, and guides them to embrace and achieve shared, collaborative goals. We also create mentorship connections, matching individuals with similar passions and ideas.

Voice

Reflecting the story of Winona.

Together with community members, we help tell the many stories of Winona. Storytelling is a thread through everything we do; we offer opportunities for community members to share stories with each other and explore creative storytelling methods online and in printed publications.

Engage Winona is also a data hub with more than 25,000 comments and growing. We knit together perspectives of the full community into stories and reports, and present them to the community and to key decision-makers. We advocate for policy and practice changes that reflect the voices of our community.

Power

Empowered training.

Engage Winona provides free workshops and pop-up engagement through our Engagement is For Everyone! program, creates and shares free toolkits and resources, offers accessible training, and collaborates with schools on models for effective community-engaged learning that serves students and organizations.

Guiding groups.

Engage Winona convenes and facilitates community coalitions to work in deep collaboration across the full community to create measurable change around big, complex issues in innovative ways.

Creating conditions for transformative community change.

All of this work, from deep listening to connective gatherings to practical step-by-step processes for changemaking projects, creates conditions for effective, homegrown community change.

Contact us to learn more about our initiatives.