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A: City Engagement <br />Several of the Trust's core members are appointed city officials form the Mayor's office, the city attorney's office, the City of <br />Columbus Department of Neighborhoods, and other administrative divisions. The Trust regularly works to engage with the <br />City through the City's CARE (Community Resilience) Coalition and the City's Community Relations Commission. Perhaps <br />the Trust's most successful engagement effort was running the Midland Simulation with Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, <br />representatives from the Trust, and members of Mayor Ginther's staff (including police and cabinet -level officials). During <br />the debrief City officials discussed the importance of developing relationships, building trust, and planning in advance of <br />community crisis. City leaders brainstormed methods to enhance internal communications, work with other groups in the <br />community, work with groups who make significant demands during a crisis, and engage in more broad -based community <br />planning efforts. <br />B. Stakeholder Engagement <br />The Trust regularly considers how to expand stakeholder engagement asking, "who is not at the table" during monthly <br />Trust meetings. A pair of fall 2017 meetings are one example of the Trust's efforts to expand stakeholder engagement. <br />Participants were encourage to consider how the local organizations and government could engender trust across <br />communities within the community. Designed to spur conversation about community division and identity, the Trust used <br />the Divided Community Project's Community Preparedness and Assessment Test.° Some CPAT results were particularly <br />striking. When asked if the community has "an identity that cuts across any community divisions and deals constructively <br />with differences," zero respondents replied "yes, the identity is clear." When asked whether the community is "ready to deal <br />with volatile situations stemming from community division," and if the community "deals constructively with division when <br />compared to other communities," seventy-five percent of participants responded "this needs more focus and attention." <br />None responded "this is one of our community's strengths" Likewise when asked if the community has "an early warning <br />system to communicate about developing concerns" all participants responded "this needs more focus and attention" <br />C. Working Groups <br />The Future Concerns / Communication Joint working group and the Readiness working group are both active. The Future <br />Concerns / Communications joint working group initiated their work in January 2018, inviting community stakeholders <br />to identify how the community is listening for and responding to divisive issues. Participants agreed that the "future <br />concerns" working group should "try to put itself out of business", perhaps by weaving ideas for listening into currently <br />existing structures. But new participants expressed some caution about the CCT, wondering how to connect suburbs to <br />the Trust's conversations, whether the right people were listening to Trust conversations, and whether the Trust was "too <br />establishment" to truly listen in the community. Others noted that many members of the community simply do not have the <br />capacity to attend yet another meeting to express their concerns, particularly in light of prior community inaction. As a result <br />of the joint working groups' initial efforts, the group asked university officials to help identify: <br />How have communities across the country "institutionalized listening" - how are communities sustainably and <br />intentionally listening to residents? <br />2. How is the Columbus community currently listening through civic and non -for -profit structures? <br />A group of four law students in a clinical mediation course interviewed five experts in community engagement as a <br />preliminary effort to begin answering the joint working group's questions presenting their findings at the May 2018 <br />Trust meeting. The students organized their research into four themes: engaging broad stakeholder participants, multi - <br />sector support, leveraging technology, building and maintaining trust. Trust members were empowered by the student <br />presentation and asked university -affiliated members to conduct additional research. Perhaps more importantly, the <br />students' work helped the Trust discuss how to move its work forward. In the summer of 2018, the Trust intends to convene <br />a conversation between leaders of city and non -governmental organizations to consider how to improve —or what is <br />missing from —their collective listening efforts. <br />PLAN IN ADVANCE <br />The Trust's Readiness working group is charged with developing a community plan in advance of civil unrest. Kicking off the <br />Readiness working group's efforts, the Trust invited Tim Heaphy, the author of the Independent Review of the 2017 Protest <br />Events in Charlottesville, Virginia,5 to spur the group's thinking about how to begin broad -based planning in advance of civil <br />unrest. Heaphy's presentation focused on what went wrong, drilling in on three themes: 1) poor communication between law <br />enforcement and other agencies; 2) Charlottesville Police Department's misplaced confidence in its ability to adequately <br />manage large events; and 3) a lack of trust between_ police and community members. Prior failures to protect public safety <br />