Vignette: Your role in conflicting issues

In an effort to bring more communities of color to your nature center you visit the city’s transportation department with an influential board member to advocate for a alteration of a bus route that will provide a stop near your center. After months of persuasion, the transportation department head encourages you to attend a city councilors’ meeting to present your case so that the limited funds can be directed to your new stop.

At the city counselors meeting, you are preceded by a low income group advocating that the route you are interested in be redirected to the local community college that offers GED and job skills programs that will help out the residents’ potential for better employment opportunities. There is a break before you present your counter proposal. What do you do?  In thinking about this consider the following:

•   What is your responsibility for addressing the low –income community’s general needs (in this case access to education)?
• To what extent should a center know about and be involved with local issues the affect the wider community?
• Is there an overlap between your strategic objectives and that of the low-income community’s?
• What would have been the advantages and disadvantages of working with the community to determine the need for a bus stop near the center?
• What steps might have been taken to know the community's needs and possibly develop a joint proposal?