On the Table: Places in the conversation for all who can join in

This Tuesday, a whole community’s ideas for making this a better place to live, work, play, learn and understand each other will be On the Table.

That, as we hope everyone knows, is the name of the region-wide event organized by the Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley, sponsored by a broad and diverse group of organizations and individuals, and open to … everybody.

That’s the whole point.

All over Columbus and across the Foundation’s 12-county service area, tables will be set for people to come together — over breakfast, lunch, dinner or just snacks and coffee — and talk about whatever is on their minds. And, perhaps even more important, to listen.

The event is designed, foundation CEO Betsy Covington said Friday, to provide “the opportunity and the push for different people to sit down and talk to each other. Too often when we do, it’s with people who look like us and think like us.” The Columbus Question, as Covington termed it, needs to be: “Who else needs to be at this table?”

The concept began four years ago as an initiative of the Chicago Community Trust, and has been expanded this year, thanks to more than $1 million in funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, to a national project involving 10 cities. (In addition to Columbus, On the Table communities include Akron, Charlotte, Detroit, Gary, Lexington, Long Beach, Miami, Philadelphia and San Jose.) The CFCV’s Community Endowment Fund and the Chattahoochee Valley Fair Fund are also providing support.

Can you still get involved at this late date? Absolutely, said Covington: “Last minute is fine, and if you and coworkers want to organize one of your own, that would be great, too.”

Places to participate Tuesday will be available all during the morning, afternoon and evening across the Valley area; a registration form and a complete list of public tables are available through the On the Table website. Registration is preferred, for the convenience of event organizers, but it’s not required.

This is decidedly not just a “usual suspects” event; on the contrary, the intention is for as many of us as possible to hear from those people who aren’t necessarily heard from in public forums, but whose insights matter, whose ideas are valuable, whose experiences can guide the rest of us in our thinking and planning and understanding.

After each On the Table gathering, everyone will have the chance to participate in a survey, put together by the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement, about what issues are most important to them and what they took from the day’s discussion.

The data from those surveys, Covington said, will be summarized and posted on the Community Foundation’s website, and “we’ll get a better look at who we really are.”

Asked what she and the other sponsors of On the Table would consider a best-case outcome of Tuesday’s On the Table gatherings, Covington said, “I want to hear from people that this was a changing experience — that they heard things they never heard before, that they met people they never met before. That it was meaningful for people.”

Although there are some suggested topics, there’s no set agenda. If they are about issues of concern in or betterment of the greater Columbus and Chattahoochee Valley community, the discussions will go wherever the people participating in them want to take them. That’s how good ideas, often unexpectedly good ideas, can happen.

The theme of On the Table is “Your Voice Matters,” which Covington said is meant as both an assurance and an open invitation: “We’re saying it because we mean it.”

Your presence is requested at the table.

This story was originally published November 3, 2017 at 4:49 PM with the headline "On the Table: Places in the conversation for all who can join in."