Group XI – Finding Common Ground

Appreciating Diversity

January 10-13, 2006

by Ellen Rulseh & Marv Prestrud, Group XI participants

If it hadn’t been for our “Appreciating Diversity, Finding Common Ground” seminar in Green Bay, January, 10-13, 2006, we wouldn’t have known that one of our co-participants grew up on a farm where his grandfather was wheelchair-bound, or that another had just helped out an elderly neighbor, a farmer, who lived at home alone and blind. It came up in our conversation after visiting the Brown County Center for Aging and Disability and at “Aspiro,” another Green Bay agency providing a variety of services to individuals with Downs Syndrome and other disabilities.

“When I was a kid I watched my Grandpa pretty much live his life from a wheelchair in three rooms. It was really kind of sad,” one of our group members told us. And the other had a story about a more recent incident. “This neighbor of mine, an old, blind farmer, got lost in his own home, and was not able to find his way to the bathroom, can you imagine that? It wasn’t until we came over and helped him clean up and get oriented that he could get back into his routine. He says he no longer wants to live.” We mapped these two situations, one past, one present, against what we learned on our site visits about the options for disability and aging services now available. It gave us renewed appreciation for the importance of ensuring that federal, state, and locally-funded services to maintain human dignity and quality of life for people in need continue to exist.

Group XI participants divided into smaller groups and visited various Green Bay Social Service agencies. On return, we met as one large group and presented our visits in memorable and dramatic ways. One participant lead us on a convincing “before” and “after” rendition of his life, where dependency on drugs and alcohol got turned around through intervention of community programs providing caring hearts and helping hands. A poem of a life on the brink was “stage set” against a backdrop of a guy sitting silently in a dim room, hunched at a table, popping pill after pill as he imbibed and obsessively swirled a glassful of ice.

Story telling, and why it is such an effective educational tool, was illustrated by Al Anderson, former Director of the Center for Community and Economic Development at UW-Extension and former Executive Director of Leadership Wisconsin (formerly called WRLP-Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program) . He told us how, as a child, he had discovered a box containing his grandfather’s wood carving tools. This discovery and his fascination with his grandfather’s life and masterful work lead him on a life-long quest to carve out an avocation in woodwork on his own. He brought along some of the tools and examples of his grandfather’s work and his own, including an image of his grandfather’s face, masterfully rendered in wood. We listened and learned, we touched and were touched.

Sometimes new understandings burst into our lives unexpectedly. While the movie “Crash” continues to receive and be nominated for film awards, it was still a “sleeper” as a pre-seminar assignment to watch it on DVD. Carefully crafted, like the seminar, the movie is an assembly of short stories about diverse people living diverse lives that intersect. It challenges the audience to look at and re-examine our social, cultural and racial stereotypes and prejudices.

Group XI participants working in small groups. Around table L-R: Annie Smith, Dawn Olson, Jack Herricks, Bill Ver Voort, Martha Klatt, John Smart, Gerilynn Perkins.

The film both challenged us and warmed us up for the other excellent seminar presentations we enjoyed, including: Native American History with John Breuninger, Planning Department Director, Oneida Nation and Dr. Carol Cornelius, PhD; Diversity in Wisconsin: Results from Census 2000 with Dan Veroff, Director, Applied Population Laboratory, UW-Madison; Leadership in a Culturally Diverse Community with Alex Zacarias, President 3N Production, LLC; Gay Issues in Rural Wisconsin with Steve Korzinek, Director of Youth Ministry, Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church; Focusing on the Different Generations with Terry Ludeman, Department of Workforce Development; Diversity, Divergent Thinking and How this Connects to Leadership with Arlen Leholm, Dean and Director, UW-Cooperative Extension; How Do We Engage With Diverse Audiences? How Do We Work Together with Tom Pflieger, Team Leadership Center.

Big thanks to seminar co-chairs, John Preissing, Northern District Director, UW-Extension and David Berard, Department Head, Sawyer County Extension, for guiding us through a revealing opening exercise in which we created a “family crest” with simple drawn images on paper, and for working with Janet Short and JoAnn Stormer in putting together another challenging, enriching and outstanding Leadership Wisconsin (formerly called WRLP-Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program) seminar.

Ellen Rulseh is the Community Outreach Coordinator for the Rock River Coalition and is President of Earth Water Works, LLC. Marv Prestrud owns and operates a large dairy farm in Northwest Wisconsin.