Sign Up Now For Second Session Of Community Conversation

By Eliza Hallabeck

With the RSVP date nearing for participation in the next Community Conversation on Cultivating Character, Newtown’s District Health Coordinator Judy Blanchard says she has high hopes for the event.

As the second meeting for Newtown’s third grant-funded Community Conversation, the Tuesday, March 29, event will task participating community members to come up with action plans to move the community toward the goal of cultivating character.

“This is what is really going to move us forward,” said Ms Blanchard.

As the second meeting for the Cultivating Character discussion nears, Ms Blanchard is hoping to gain even more community involvement. Interested participants are asked to contact Ms Blanchard by e-mailing blanchardj@newtown.k12.ct.us or by calling 203-426-2798 by Tuesday, March 22.

The March 29 event will include dessert and coffee and an agenda spanning the 6 to 8:30 pm time period of the meeting, to be held in Reed Intermediate School’s library.

An announcement for the meeting said, “As a result of the first Community Conversation on Character Attributes in January, a list of Next Steps was developed to guide us into Phase II — developing specific initiatives to embed positive character attributes in our community. Attendance at the first conversation is not required.”

The Community Conversations are underwritten by the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, and were first brought to Newtown in 2009, when roughly 100 community members gathered together over multiple meetings to discuss the topic of bullying.

A year later another group of roughly 100 community members discussed the topic of underage drinking. Communities awarded the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund grant have a better likelihood the following year of being awarded the grant again for another topic.

The goal of the conversation is to bring together a diverse group of residents, regardless of their socioeconomic status, age, gender, faith, or racial ethnicity. Volunteers from the community train as moderators and recorders to help identify and track the common ground of each group’s discussion.

The school district’s Strategic Plan Committee on Character Development wrote the grant application this year, according to Ms Blanchard, and the Community Conversation will further the committee’s efforts. This year’s conversation has the goal of identifying and modeling character attributes that should be embedded throughout the school district and town. The conversation is hosted by the Newtown Public Schools.

Attendants at the Community Conversation event will be broken into small groups to focus on four aspects of the community where character can be developed.