Make your voice heard with a Bozeman community chat

One of the questions that arises when people begin to think about social reform is: how can my voice be heard? How can I let the people with the power to push for reform hear what I have to say?

The City of Bozeman has now organized a way to address it. As the city looks to create a new equity and inclusion plan, they want to hear from the people who this plan will impact. In order to hear from people, the city is putting together a series of community chats.

Bozeman Community Engagement Coordinator Dani Hess said that the goal with these community chats is to gather input from citizens across the community on the goals and recommendations for the upcoming equity and inclusion plan.

The basic idea is that they want to hear from as many people as possible in the community about the issues they face in the city and how these issues can be remedied, she said. “These are issues we know people care about, we’re talking about housing, transportation, education, access to health care, this feeling of community and public safety, we want to plug into the conversations we know are already happening,” Hess said.

While the city will be hosting a few open-invite chats both virtually and in-person on September 11, 12 and 13, one unique aspect of the chats is they are designed to happen in any space.

“A really cool way for us to support people in having conversations about these really big topics is in these places and spaces and with people that they feel comfortable with and that are convenient for them to pull together,” Hess said.

All it takes is for one person to sign up to be a chat host. As a host, the individual will receive a community chat host kit which includes resources to guide an effective conversation and a post-chat survey so the city can get access to the feedback and the contents of the chat. From there, the chat can take place anywhere with any number of people from any walk of life.

One chat that has already happened was hosted by Flor Vega-Castillo, a graduate student from Peru who is currently in her second year in the master of public administration program and a member of the First-Generation Students Association. 

“The goal was to give them [participants] a voice because sometimes due to work, or any other realms of life they don’t have this chance to talk and share their experiences,” Vega-Castillo, who hosted the chat entirely in Spanish said,

Her chat was centered around the topics of: housing, mental health and education. Vega-Castillo pointed to how these three issues, while complex in their own ways, can overlap in the community. “Another barrier — like when the school district for instance, or any other organization — wants to bring a specialist on a topic, maybe a multi-lingual representative for the organization, sometimes housing is a challenge for this person to accept the job. It becomes a wicked problem because everything is so connected,” she said.

In a similar vein, she mentioned a person who attended was a part of the school district who brought up how Latino and Latina students feel out of place because of new adjustments, especially if they recently arrived in Bozeman or the United States because it is hard to find mental health support for their children.

Vega-Castillo described the chats as mutually beneficial because the city now has information that they otherwise wouldn't have because of the nature and demographics of these participants. “We actually had a participant that has Hispanic heritage but she was born here, so that also implies the importance and the need for this participant to share their parents' perspectives,” Vega-Castillo said.

“I hope we come out of these conversations with a lot of powerful insight from people who are facing these issues everyday. I think our policy makers need to hear that, our staff needs to hear that, and our community partners needs to hear that in order to make better policy,” Hess said, summarizing the types of benefits these chats can have.

“We need input from students, they make up a really significant portion of the overall population in Bozman, and are dealing with a lot of these issues,” Hess said about student engagement.

The chats will be starting on September 11 and running throughout the week. If you or someone you know wants to become a host or wants to learn more about the chats, visit engage.bozeman.net/belonging.