Overview
Delta Chats is pleased to announce our first ever Interest Share Fair to be held Tuesday, April 7 from 4:30 to 8:00 pm at the Heirman Building JUHC 952 room at Bay College in conjunction with the National Week of Conversation.
The Interest Share Fair is a celebration of community vitality—where individual health and wellness meet civic engagement. Non-profits, non-partisan organizations, and individuals from across the region will join forces to offer interactive booths centered on the theme of civic wellness and respectful listening and dialogue. There will be an emphasis on using more local resources to meet local needs.
To learn more and register to be a participant offering a booth, click here.
To see who has signed up to be a participant with a table and their shared interest click here.
Additional Information and Resources
To get a sense of what a shared interest fair can entail, check out this 12-minute video, How to Squeeze All the Juice out of Retirement with author Riley Moynes. To see some notes summarizing this talk with some links to more background information click here.
Ideally this first annual Shared Interest Fair will support people making new connections and forming neighborhood groups to gather around common interests. Dr. William Furtwengler is a friend of Riley Moynes and has done practical work developing a life long learning program of interesting activities at iLife on several locations in Florida. To explore, click here.
The University of North Georgia on their Blue Ridge Campus developed a program to foster life long learning and connections in their community. Click here to learn about (PEAKS) Personal Enrichment, Action and Knowledge series. PEAKS offers adults 55+ in-person presentations and workshops at UNG's Blue Ridge campus to foster lifelong learning and community connection.
Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam is a Harvard professor, and political social scientist. He authored fourteen books, his work focuses on American society and creative studies and analyses to determine trends. His 90-minute documentary film "Join or Die" is a comprehensive study that shows that democracies with citizenry very active in small neighborhood groups like churches, civic organizations like Lions, Eagles, Elks organization, and trade unions, sports & games clubs have better responsive, trustworthy, democratic engaged citizenry and effective government. His movie is streaming on Netflix right now, and more information and a brief video trailer is on the website: click here.
It turns out that actively engaged responsive democratic citizenry also improves public health in the community. People tend to enjoy life more and have a better health span when they are involved with people in their community and have a sense of purpose and service. Jodi Brookins Fisher, Professor and Public Health Division Director from Central Michigan University, will have a table and be a resource at this event. Jodi is very involved in the healthy democracy healthy people movement. She is an advocate for the research that went into the Health & Democracy Index. When communities vote they influence policy decisions that have a big effect on their health. This analysis compares 12 public health indicators and voter turnout to the restrictiveness of voting policies in each state. Click here.
Back in April 2008, Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt spoke at the Madison Arboretum to the Eco-municipality Network about how to communicate with naysayers. It would be wonderful if a small group of people at a table during this event would like to role play and demonstrate how this civil interaction could take place. If you are interested you can contact Brad Bender, 906-399-4329, email bendba19@baycollege.edu
This snap shot from the video "How to Squeeze the Most Juice Out of Retirement" shows that the community connections at a Shared Interest Fair can be casual and fun.
Here is the QR Code to this page, if you'd like to share it. 
Here is the link to the event poster: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14T0JYvAMoZ3cahv9KeB1u6h8uSi7jSzT/view?usp=sharing
Here is the link to the event brochure: https://drive.google.com/file/d/124V0-ql7He_HdU7qHmCuxs-DjT54hZng/view?usp=sharing
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Bonus link to a 5-minute video about how to mutually improve understanding and relationships with contrarian "nay-sayer" types with strong, differing opinions. The Natural Step is a sustainability program started a couple decades ago in Sweden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UILDT8xBb9g