The Social Innovation Forum provides a facilitated, empowering time and space for proactive community members to unite, learn, gain inspiration, and create innovative strategies that address social and environmental problems in Portland neighborhoods. This month, the forum turns its focus to “caring.” Speakers, including Charles Lewis of Ethos Music and Amy Sacks of the Pixie Project, represent successful social entrepreneurs and people in the community who are leading community change; Workshops will review innovative trends in elevating the value of caring and how to apply these trends to your work and passion.

Unfortunately, caring is something society doesn’t value much. We value numbers, and data. And we almost think caring is a weird thing to say. What does it even mean? This forum will bring caring to the forefront, and talk about how it's a wonderful thing to care, and to say you do. Do we talk about that on our websites? Do we ask others if they care? Do we acknowledge when they do? How do we help people care? When we care, do we act?

Workshops: Engaging Volunteers Effectively, Efficiently, and Appreciatively led by Hands on Portland, Developing a Caring Economy led by Real Wealth of Portland, and Caring--Inspiration to Implementation led by the Giving Tree and Community Warehouse. Guest speakers include Jane Green and Melissa Owens of Children’s Cancer Association, Amy Sacks of the Pixie Project, and Charles Lewis of Ethos Music.

The forum is your chance to talk with others in the community who share your concern. And if you have an idea ready to turn into action, you’ll find experts ready to help you get started. That’s all in keeping with the goal of the Springboard Social Innovation Forum: unleashing the potential of “ordinary” citizens to address local challenges with lasting solutions.

Admission $5 (includes a light supper). To learn more about Portland-based nonprofit Springboard Innovation or to find out about future forum topics, visit www.springboardinnovation.org or contact: [email protected]

Vision planning for people who want to do something for a community.

Do you not yet have a vision statement written out, or would you like to tweak or revise? And do you say things like, "I'm hoping someone will want to contribute to my project: it is for the public good"? Then this workshop is for you.

Saturday, September 20th, 10am-12pm. Alex Linsker, Catherine Poole, and Russ Finkelstein will be the main facilitators and coaches of the workshop.

The main questions about your vision: Where are you coming from? What phrasing describes the reason why you’re doing this?

If related questions come up organically, we’ll explore. These questions are where groups like “Collective Agency” started.

Whether a website, open source project, discussion group, nonprofit startup, or something else, the main focus of the people who show up will be for the benefit of a group or groups of people (the "community"). We’ll have fun and develop a vision planning community of our own.

In 2 hours we will meet-and-greet (go around and say what we’re working on and what we’d like to happen with it), have a brief overview, then invest most of the time in one-on-one coaching in 15 minute sessions.

Coaches will each bring a vision plan for something they’ve done.

This event is free of charge. Coaching/mentoring/skill-sharing will be available here in the future with both free and paid options.

Please RSVP. Plancast is best, so people can see you're coming. Email [email protected] or tweet @alexlinsker with any questions.