The City of Evansville will hold a VOICE visioning session from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 14, in Carter Hall in the University Center.

VOICE is Evansville’s community-wide, citizen-driven vision process that allows community members to share their ideas, hopes, and visions for Evansville’s preferred future.

Through sessions facilitated by Leadership Evansville, VOICE aims to bring together diverse members of the community to discuss their dreams for Evansville in an open forum. The facilitation is led in such a way that respectful conversations will occur, all voices will be heard, and opinions will be documented, ensuring that the entire community has the opportunity to take part in creating a desired future.

“This is really about building trust amongst the members of our community and learning that if we all join together and have civil dialogue about our future desires and current issues, we can create a strong society that will thrive and grow,” said Mayor Lloyd Winnecke. “Through this effort, I am confident that Evansville will become a place where people from all over will want to live, work and play.”

Multiple VOICE sessions have been held throughout the year to obtain feedback from people of all ages, ethnic and religious backgrounds, and neighborhoods.

The VOICE Process:

• Leadership Evansville will facilitate discussion sessions at easy-to-access public locations, such as Evansville Public Library System branches and Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation schools. The sessions will be advertised in neighborhood newsletters, the newspaper, television, radio and Internet.

• Comments from each session will be available to the participants and the public. A summary and detailed notes will be posted on the VOICE website within one week of the session.

• Once all comments are collected, additional community sessions will occur to verify that the information collected truly represents participants’ opinions.

• Then, common themes and ideas will be grouped by topic area to serve guidance for those organizations, businesses, universities, individuals and government bodies with interest in that topic to move forward with further research and planning toward a common goal.

“I firmly believe that communities with a shared vision, and appropriate processes to capture, record, and inspire action around common goals can achieve healthier, more vibrant futures,” said Lynn Miller-Pease, executive director of Leadership Evansville . “The approach we are taking with VOICE is allowing citizens to actively create and participate in envisioning their own their own future so they can dream big and be part of making it happen.”

For more information, contact Leadership Evansville at 812/589-3682.