Welcome to Train the Briefer

Before November, we will brief over 4,000 people from member institutions -- your role is crucial!

Briefing as Action Presentation vs Briefing Action People are passive recipients Action designed to get specific of information reactions -surface new leaders -agitate participants through reflecting about experience Not Organizing Is Organizing

Mediating Institutions as Interpreters -Help people develop a collective understanding of why things are the way the are -Civil sector interpretation can challenge market/Gov’t explanation -Civil sector explanation often raises questions of Justice

Train the Briefer Slides For going through Briefing Slides

Welcome! Please sign in and make sure you got one of each of the papers as you came in. Introduce self and start with a round of introductions -- name and institution

Each Briefer will be provided a packet with... Sign in sheets Response cards FAQ sheet/info about BSK

Outline of 30-min Briefing 30-minute Best Starts for Kids Briefing Outline Welcome and Introductions (2 minutes) Problems surfaced through listening--and how they affect you (3 minutes) Discussion (in pairs): How do any of these problems--mental health, access to health care, barriers to learning, homelessness, funding services--affect you or your loved ones? (4 minutes) Best Starts for Kids Why we chose to work on BSK (>1 min) Activity and explanation of BSK (9 min) How does working on BSK reflect your institution’s values and mission? (>1 min) Reactions? Do you see how working on BSK reflects your institution’s values and mission? (5-7 min) Call to Action (3 min)

Briefing Begins! Step One: Simple introductions: name and institution (just name is fine if all the same institution) Step Two: Explain listening process (see next slide)

Mental Health, Homelessness, Health Care, Barriers to Learning In January 2015, Sound Alliance institutions listened to their members to discover what issues were most urgently and deeply affecting members in our area. We heard that people’s priorities were mental health, homelessness, health care, and education. Briefer tells story about how this affects them

KEY STEP: Briefer explains how these problem areas have affected them Take 1-2 minutes to think about and write down how these problems have affected you or your loved ones. We will come back to this after the Best Starts for Kids section.

After Briefer models next up is discussion time! Tip: keep track of time and tell people when they are half-way through (they have 4 minutes, so 1.5-2 minutes each)

Turn to a neighbor to discuss (~2 minutes each) “How have problems in these areas--mental health, health care, barriers to learning, homelessness--affected you or your loved ones?”

What can we do? “As Sound Alliance, we take action on the problems in our community by making them into concrete, specific, and winnable issues. That is, instead of getting overwhelmed by huge problems, we break them apart into ways that we can take action. These problems are huge and complex. We found something that we can do RIGHT NOW” As Sound Alliance, we take action on the problems in our community by making them into concrete, specific, and winnable issues. That is, instead of getting overwhelmed by huge problems, we break them apart into ways that we can take action. These are hard problems to solve, with lots of potential solutions. However, many of those solutions are things that we can’t solve right now. We found something that we can do RIGHT NOW

Best Starts for Kids -- Strategy BSK is a property tax levy (will cost a $400,000 home about $56/year) that focuses on investing in prevention for kids ages 0-5, rather than spending more money on preventable chronic illness and the criminal justice system later

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Are VERY Common The more ACES a person has, the more likely they are to experience chronic disease and incarceration To explain, we will do an activity

Practice Activity

After Activity, connect to institutional values Workshop: What institution brought you here today? What does your institution stand for that makes you stand for best starts for kids? (ex., medical professionals are health care advocates; educators are education advocates; faith institutions acting on their theological values) This part gets at peoples’ and institutions’ self-interest--what is the hook for them?

Why should WE work on Best Starts for Kids? Briefer describes how this strategy fits into the values of their institution--tailored for each briefing (1-2 sentences is fine)

Closing 7 minutes or so for reaction and discussion (direct questions you don’t have time to answer or can’t answer either to FAQs sheet and/or ask people to write down their questions on the response cards so we can get back to them) Call to Action -- Attend Assemblies with elected officials Say thanks and goodbye--Great job! You’re done!

Reactions? How does working together on Best Starts for Kids reflect the values and mission of your institution? You also have a chance to write down any other questions and view FAQs on Sound Alliance website and our FAQ form you received when you arrived 7 minutes

Will you join us? Each person should have a response card...there are assemblies coming up to ask local candidates for public office to endorse Best Starts for Kids. This is a chance to learn more about Best Starts for Kids and to have your voice heard in front of the people you elect.

Thanks for coming!

Workshop: Think back to the beginning section when you explored how these problems related to your own story… We will take some time now to craft your story for this section.

Time to practice!