Dialogues Across Nebraska

Dialogues Across Nebraska (DAN) actively engages youth in communities. College students, who believe in the power of youth leadership, teach local high school students the skills that transfer to service in their communities. DAN carries out a focused service project which is a dialogue or rounds of dialogues on local community issues of social and economic opportunity and the environment.

The Pilot DAN program was supported from 2005 to June 2007 by the University of Nebraska Rural Initiative. In August 2007 the program was transferred to a UNL academic unit, the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication, so more students can be involved. Sandi Sattler Weber, Ph.D, is responsible for DAN's initial conception and subsequent development, and will head the program at AgLEC. She can be reached by email at ssattlerweber2@unl.edu.

• Dialogues In Your Community
  
  
• The Faces of DAN
  
  

Youth training includes: team building, facilitating, community organizing, youth and adult partnerships, learning the importance of youth involvement in community, change by moving an idea to action, and why dialogues work to promote unity. Several tools are used for planning events that the youth leadership facilitates. These tools are dialogue techniques adapted from the Intergenerational Dialogues^TM model (Gambone, J.V. (2001) Together for tomorrow: Building community through Intergenerational Dialogue, Crystal Bay, MN: Elder Eye Press) and the World Cafe model (Brown, J. & Isaacs, D. (2005) World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter, San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers).

DAN was piloted in the summer of 2005. The DAN program enjoyed the support of many individuals, organizations, and communities across the state. We thank everyone involved! Please take time to enjoy the successes other communities have shared.

Communities

• Ainsworth (2005 & 2006)
  
• Burwell & Taylor (2005 & 2006)
  
• Butler County (2006)
  
• Chappell (2005)
  
• Columbus (2006)
  
• Crawford (2005)
  
• Curtis (2006)
  
• Dodge (2006)
  
• Harrison (2006)
  
• Hay Springs (2005)
  
• Imperial (2006)
  
• Knox County (2005)
  
• Norfolk (2006)
  
• Wakefield (2006)