A Snowy Practicum in Winona
It was truly special to welcome the other Civic Bridgers Fellows to the beautiful Winona as part of our service for the Americorps Vista program. Not only is Winona the community I serve in, but the place I currently call home, so I enjoyed showing it off.
Engage Winona works to strengthen the community through conversations, support, and training. My mind went right to conversations when thinking of how I wanted to frame my practicum. Dialogue is incredibly powerful in community work, and seeing as all the fellows are tapped into a unique network of knowledge, I focused on promoting conversations that would draw on learnings we’ve gathered at our host sites. With this, I knew I wanted to unravel and discuss power networks in communities. Engage Winona and Civic Bridgers have increased my understanding of these networks tremendously. Big task, but I landed on looking at how our organizations leverage trust with the local community to invite others into an allied power source.
The morning started pretty snowy up in the Twin Cities, and with a 2 and half hour commute to Winona, travel was taking longer than expected. Luckily, the first group of Fellows arrived pretty close to on time. With their input, a few phone calls to the other fellows still driving in, and some deep breaths, a new game plan formed pretty quickly. Looking back, I could not have planned a better way to start their visit to Winona. It exemplified why the fellows are such resources to each other, not only as community-minded people but also as professional support as we navigate a lot of this work for the first time.
It was during the first part of this dialogue that many intriguing thoughts came up that I still catch myself reflecting on. I shared with the fellows how I've seen my host site, Engage Winona, use trust within our community to build civic engagement. One way I've seen this is through the Lived Experience Leaders Cohort, which supports local residents to create the change they want to see in the community. Another prime example of this is the Winona Area Kitchen Table, a leadership cohort of local community members that works together on solutions to housing issues through building relationships and collective visioning. These programs allow community members to take ownership of their community, build capacity for further civic engagement, and create a stronger network within Winona.
During our retreat at the beginning of the Fellowship, we learned about the community kitchen model of democracy, which promotes civic responsibility by focusing on what the community can do to support itself rather than what the government should do. Engage Winona has showcased this model in action with the programs mentioned earlier, therefore bringing more people into the community kitchen. It was really rewarding to hear that other Fellows have a lot of the same observations with their organizations. However, I think it was even more rewarding to discuss what our organizations would look like without trust, or what happens when there is a loss of trust within our communities. We were able to lean on each other a bit and use the knowledge from our growing professional experiences to analyze how organizational trust lends itself to actionable change.
My favorite part of the day came right at the end. As Engage Winona’s office is inside the Winona County Historical Society, I got to show off the museum to the Fellows and immerse them in the history of Winona. The actual activity was drawing on asset-based thinking when entering a community, but more importantly, it was a fun way to learn about a more rural town. I loved seeing the Fellows climb up in the steamboat, read about historical figures whose names litter the town, admire the stained glass, and feel the ripple of living on the Mississippi river. It’s refreshing to see the town through a newcomer's eye, so I hope I can keep this perspective in mind when continuing my work in the community. I'm thankful to have had the opportunity to share my learnings from Engage Winona, plus a beautiful city, with such an incredible group.
Angelina Rueda, Program Development Fellow