Dialogue on Diversity - Broadening the Voices in Urban and Community Forestry

This is an outreach model developed through a series of meetings for forestry and other natural resource professionals to use in order to reach out to different segments of society.

To identify a model for natural resource professsionals to use to increase participation, we held 11 pilot outreach workshops across the country.  Our intent was to bring in people who have never been involved in urban and community forestry in order to eventually broaden the circle of involvement.  We wanted to determine why these people were not involved, what they wanted from urban and community forestry, and how they wanted to be involved.  We also invited forestry professionals to meet and connect with the citizens who were "nonengaged" or underrepresented in urban and community forestry issues.  We wanted to learn their reactions to information shared by citizen participants as well as to help them build relationships with these new audiences.  From these meetings, we developed an outreach model that forestry and other natural resource professionals can use to reach out to different segments of society.