United Way releases community report after almost 30 listening sessions and $650,000 in funding

United Way of Northern California, a local nonprofit, has released a community report following almost 30 listening sessions that were deployed using grants of at least $650,000.

The Community Voices Report identified seven key themes from Shasta County residents regarding their experiences living in the county, what they value, what concerns them and how to strengthen connections across differences. It’s the result of the nonprofit’s Building Bridges Initiative, which aims to have conversations with community members to find ways to bridge divides. 

United Way President and CEO Kalie Brisbon presented the report earlier this week at an event held at the Reciproka Center in Redding. She explained that information was gathered from community members through extended listening sessions, informal community conversations and tabling events. 

“Before we can have better conversations across differences, we have to actually listen, not perform listening, not confirm what we already believe, but listen,” she said. “What we heard was honest, and some of it was hard.”

The seven themes outlined in the report include these findings: 

• People are tired
  • “100% of sessions surfaced tension and fatigue. People are worn out from living on edge.” 
• Safety means different things to different people
  • “Stability for some, belonging for others. Both are real. This gap demands honest attention.” 
• Fences have replaced porches
  • “Isolation has replaced neighborliness. Residents long for connectedness not division.” 
• People don’t trust their leaders
  • “Residents feel decisions are made before meetings happen, and certain voices are systematically excluded.” 
• The cost of living is breaking people
  • “Housing is unaffordable. Wages lag behind cost of living. You cannot ask people to build bridges when they are drowning.” 
• Young people have solutions
  • “Young people offer the sharpest observations about what is broken and how to fix it. Engaging them  means learning from them, not just programming for them.” 
• Gathering places are needed
  • “Deep longing for spaces to be together without judgement…. Libraries, parks, coffee shops, open faith communities.” 

United Way received at least $650,000 for the project from the California Endowment, McConnell Foundation, Redding Rancheria, Sierra Health Foundation and Sierra Pacific Industries. 

Brisbon said the funds mainly went toward paying for staff time related to listening activities as well as for staff to be trained in the “Harwood Institute’s models and methodology of listening to communities.” The Harwood Institute is a nonprofit based in Maryland that aims to bridge divides within communities and strengthen civic culture. United Way worked with the Harwood Institute for the project. Brisbon added that funding was also used to pay for food and other amenities during listening sessions. 

She said since United Way started conducting the community conversations, she’s been seeing changes in how people interact with one another by changing their behavior and approach to discourse. She also said that the organization made educational videos for community members to watch on their own time and has created a recommended reading list. 

Larry Olmstead, the former head of United Way Northern of Northern California, was also at the event, where he explained that this report and the nonprofit’s efforts have the ability to make changes in Shasta. 

“We’re not going to solve the problems in Congress,” he said, “but we can bring people together to do good work and good things in the community on a smaller basis, and we’re seeing a lot of that happen in Shasta County already.”

Disclosure: In previous years, Shasta Scout has received two grants from the North State Equity Fund, a project of the United Way of Northern California. The grant values totaled $7,000.

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