In the summer of 2020, DUG held our first Listening Tour to engage a variety of stakeholders including gardeners, program participants, garden leaders, workshop attendees, board members, educators and the broader community.
After connecting with hundreds of people through surveys and interviews, we partnered with CSU graduate students to identify critical feedback that vital in reorienting DUG’s Vision Mission and Values in 2021. Information from the Listening Tour also shaped new initiatives and programs such as the Baseline Infrastructure Initiative, DUG Corps, Micro Network events, and more robust leadership for Garden Leaders, among others.
To build on the positive momentum of our first Listening Tour, this summer we’re launching our ‘Listening Tour 2.0‘ across 6 DUG Gardens, specifically targeting groups we may have missed the first time, including educators (who were BUSY during the pandemic!), folks with a first language other than English, and those who may have had difficulty participating in an online survey due to technical barriers.
DUG is proud to be a community-led organization; constant feedback loops are necessary in all our systems and processes. In order to help us build capacity amongst staff to engage in this work, DUG has partnered with Centrality Research, a team specializing in bringing a community-driven voice to organizational decision-making. In May of this year, DUG staff and DUG Corps participated in an Engaging Community Through Conversation training led by Centrality Research in order to continue to develop our team’s community engagement skills as they relate to gathering, using, synthesizing, and implementing community feedback.
We want to dream alongside our communities about all the ways our organization can be a catalyst for community connection, relationship-building, and the shared vision of gardens as spaces of belonging.
One of our goals for this Listening Tour is to reduce barriers to participating in feedback sharing. Our six listening sessions will provide food, tandem children’s activities, interpretation (as needed), and each participant will receive a $25 gift card to King Sooper for participation.
We appreciate you being along for the journey as DUG continues to live our values of earning trust, demonstrating integrity, embracing equity, building community and inspiring curiosity. We are listening. And we can’t wait to hear from you. We look forward to sharing the findings of our Listening Tour 2.0 later this year.
