Civity Leader: Jordan Feyerherm
Organization: Center for Rural Affairs (CFRA)
“When I think about what a welcoming community looks like,” says CFRA’s Jordan Feyerherm, “it’s not just saying the right things. It’s coming together and working for your fellow community member when they need it and when someone comes to threaten that sense of community.”
Feyerherm works with members of rural communities in Nebraska to increase inclusion and to create a sense of belonging, especially for groups and individuals who may not traditionally be seen as part of the community.
His work is guided by CFRA’s tagline: “We are unapologetically rural. We are looking to build vibrant rural communities across the region.” Their vision is “a community that is welcoming to all peoples and inclusive of everyone’s wants, needs, desires; and also able to function as a prosperous community that’s able to stay economically viable, provide homes, and has employment for its residents.”
“As we all know, small communities can be very welcoming, and they can be very warm, even to people who are new to the community,” Feyerherm said. “But there’s also an aspect of who can be included and who is expected to be included.” Naming and defining inclusion can help communities think about it differently and “broaden their definition of what their community can be or is.”
Feyerherm remembers one interaction in particular with a man from a rural community. “At first, he was very distant to the idea of inclusion, of diversity, of equity, because he only saw them as these broad buzzwords that he felt were being put upon him. But after talking more and explaining inclusion the way we see it, he understood and came around to the idea of inclusion that we were talking about – learning who your neighbor is, how you can embrace them as an individual and better your community for it.”
Feyerherm attributes this evolution to relationship-building. “The reason relationships are so important in this work is because in order to understand the community, you have to understand the individuals involved in the community. What are the dynamics at play, and what are the things that the community most needs? You’re obviously not going to become a member of that community completely, but you need to be able to navigate it in a genuine and respectful way to do anything that has any lasting, long-term impact and effect any substantive change, especially when the goal of the work is very much within changing hearts, minds, and culture of thought.”
For Feyerherm, a Civity collaboration makes complete sense, because Civity focuses on building relationships and exploring what it means to be welcoming.
“What Civity is trying to do, and what we’re trying to do are very similar and really complementary,” he said. “The reason we were so excited to work with Civity is because they had a tool that they had already developed. It could be adjusted to be relevant to each community. The end goal is to build relationships, to bring people together, and to practice conversation skills that people don’t always practice with intentionality.”
Feyerherm sought to be trained to share civity and the Civity approach with local community leaders. “When you’re coming in to work with different communities or different organizations, it’s all about being flexible and giving them what they need at that time. So, having a tool like Civity, where it really is all about opening up conversation and learning how to talk with one another in productive ways and deepen the conversation, this is a tool that fits in well.”
The work of CFRA, bolstered by Civity strategies, contributed to a powerful moment of inclusion in one community.
“We had been there for about a year, and had spent a lot of time networking, introducing people,” Feyerherm said. “At one point, someone in town was hanging up some rather racist and xenophobic flyers that were unwelcoming to the Hispanic community in town. The community really came together to renounce this behavior and stand with the Hispanic community. Without our prompting, the faith community came together, different aspects of the nonprofit community came together, business owners, city officials. These were all people we had been talking with, who had attended our workshops. It was really inspiring to see.”
“That’s what we mean by inclusion and what we hope to see in strong and welcoming communities – that the community will come together to protect their own against unwelcoming behavior like that.” And, though the community acted on its own, Feyerherm believes that CFRA’s work gave them a foundation to help them take a stand. “By introducing allies that may not know each other in the community and by spreading a shared language of understanding, when things like this do arise, people will not only be able to know who they can count on to stand with them, but they’ll have the same language and the same terminology to really be on the same page.”
Feyerherm plans to continue his work having what he calls “uncomfortable-comfortable conversations” using Civity training as an important tool. “It’s these conversations that we all are uncomfortable with but at the same time know need to happen. We want to keep pushing those conversations and creating spaces where people feel that they can have them – where they can ask questions and not be afraid to explore different ways of thinking.”
Malka and Palma caught up with Jordan in May. The pandemic stay-at-home drew our conversation to the ways in which interacting remotely is a useful supplement to in-person meetings – though not everyone has access to programs such as Zoom and many people who do cannot do their work remotely.
Yet even when people have access, technology lacks the multi-dimensionality of being face-to-face. Going to where people actually are provides, Jordan observes, a “deeper context of who they are and what they’re dealing with.”
We discovered that Jordan came to his community work with CFRA by way of food. After being a chef for a number of years, his work with a local community garden brought him into contact with the Center’s community food network initiatives. Now, with CFRA’s Inclusive Foods Program, he integrates food and cooking into his work of bringing people together. One plan, on hold during the pandemic, is to bring people together to share cultural traditions in a dinner party format – a multicultural dinner that incorporates civity!
In addition to sharing a meal, sharing conversation and stories about identities and culture will be on the menu.
Jordan plans to put difference on the table by inviting people to share their stories about, for example, “What did your grandma make for you growing up, and what is the significance of that to you now?”
“People – especially members of the dominant culture group – view culture as something so distant and far removed from themselves that it doesn’t have any real bearing on their day-to-day. We are trying to change that narrative to say that ‘you do have culture, and these are the things that represent that culture.’”
Overall, says Jordan, “civity is a great kind of backbone to these types of activities of getting people to deepen the conversation and relate to each other – and maybe be a little uncomfortable.”