About                   

Pittsfield Listens Vision   All members of the Pittsfield community are empowered and engaged to help shape the future of the town we love.

Pittsfield Listens Mission   Pittsfield Listens brings community members together in a safe and authentic way to share ideas, get informed, discuss issues, support solutions, and help make Pittsfield a great place for everyone to live, learn, work, and play.

Pittsfield Listens: Working together to make Pittsfield a great place for everyone to live, learn, work, and play

Pittsfield Listens is...

1. Reclaiming, redesigning, and reinvigorating the way our community and its schools make progress

   1. Developing leaders and structures that ensure public participation

   2. Empowering grassroots changemakers to develop systems that work for everybody

2. Fostering relationships in both expected and unlikely places for positive change

   1. Meeting people where they live, learn, work, and play

   2. Bringing people together from all walks of life and ages across multiple perspectives and backgrounds

3. Roundtables, not podiums, for in-depth and engaged conversations

   1. Respecting differences as well as seeking common ground

   2. For a sense of mutually owned decisions and actions

Pittsfield Listens means …

1. Nurturing Leaders

   1. Families and students step-up to new levels of leadership in community and its schools--leaders emerge from anywhere.

   2. Encouraging the power of youth voice on issues and policies that directly affect their education and their life.

2. Promoting diversity and equity in race, class, gender

   1. Fear no longer plays a role: everyone is valued and included; processes are participatory

   2. Building bridges and learning from each other so that the systems work for everyone

3. Embracing creativity, openness to new ideas and new methods

   1. Tap the power of individuals’ stories to form a collective narrative about system-wide change

   2. Celebrating progress from all contributors

Pittsfield Listens is a civic engagement project of the Pittsfield Youth Workshop.  Since 2011, we have led community organizing efforts with parents, students and other community members in a process to build stronger community with stronger schools.  

Pittsfield Listens works in partnership with NH Listens at the Carsey Institute of the University of New Hampshire. We are the lead community partner to the  Pittsfield School District as part of the District-Level Systems Change initiative, which supports a shift in the education to prepare students to thrive in a global, complex, and fast-changing society.  

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