Community Listening Project

The Community Listening Project is a program that trains volunteer community members in the art of oral history and engages them in interviewing their neighbors. The process of interviewing people of different backgrounds helps to heal fractures and misunderstandings caused by socio-economic, racial, and ethnic diversity, and to forge a cohesive community identity. It's also a lot of fun!

In our bountiful Sonoma County, with people from many different backgrounds, how can we, as a community, become more inclusive and proactive problem solvers? This is one of the questions that the Community Listening Project strives to address. By bringing together people from diverse community groups across Sonoma County in an effort to build empathy, understanding and communication, the project aims to break down the barriers of ignorance and intolerance through the process of listening to the voices and looking into the faces of our own neighbors.

Using oral history techniques, the Community Listening Project creates a structure that allows people to come to know one another, cross boundaries, and slip a toe into someone else's shoe.

This is a pivotal time for Sonoma County. A rapidly changing and increasingly diverse population creates both opportunities for and challenges to the creation of a healthy community. Many of these challenges arise from fear, ignorance and lack of interaction—which too often lead to divisions, hostility and even violence.

As the Community Action Program report stated a few years ago, there is a higher level of racism in Sonoma County than is generally acknowledged by public leaders and the media. The report indicated that, in all aspects of community life—from services, to education, to political representation—a significant population of Sonoma County feels disenfranchised.

The Community Listening Project trains volunteers to conduct interviews with people from diverse ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, generational, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds about their life stories and personal experiences.

Each volunteer interviewer conducts interviews with community members of his choosing. Interviewers are encouraged to select neighbors, colleagues, or even strangers from backgrounds different than their own. In addition to learning about the Interviewee's life, interviewers ask specific questions about their subject's experiences of and perspectives on local issues, especially those regarding acceptance of diversity.

Listening for a Change records all interviews, transcribes them, and archives them in our growing library of community voices. The Community Listening Project has also launched a public awareness campaign. You may have seen posters containing photographs and excerpts from statements of Interviewees displayed in public places throughout Sonoma County. In addition, we often work with the Community Media Center, KRCB television/radio, and Spanish Radio KBBF to create public service announcements that are aired on television and radio.

The Community Listening Project creates a deeper commitment to and acceptance of diversity among varying cultural groups. In addition, it promotes understanding across racial and age divisions and brings communities and families together in new and meaningful ways. Our goal is to help produce systemic, long-term transformation that will foster community problem-solving and understanding.

We hold workshops every other month for community members to get involved. See the schedule of workshops above. If you are interested in attending a workshop, scheduling one for a community group, or getting involved in some other way (we always need volunteer transcribers), please don't hesitate to contact us.

If you live outside of Sonoma County and are interested in having a workshop in your own community, please contact us and we will be glad to help you get started.