Over 230 leaders attended ONE Wake's Internal Assembly in-person at Baptist Grove Church on Thursday night, with an additional 82 watching online at home. Together we ratified three new priorities for the organization: housing, mental health, and public transportation!

This internal assembly was the culmination of three months of hard work. In early March, ONE Wake member institutions ratified a listening campaign strategy to speak with 2,100 members to identify the top pressures facing their families and communities, and to identify the leaders with the appetite to do something about it!

Since then, ONE Wake members engaged 1,693 people through 137+ separate listening sessions. That’s 1,693 of us who wouldn’t otherwise have a seat at the table in Wake County. That’s 1,693 that politicians and power players in Wake County will have to hear. Your voices matter and that’s worth celebrating!

After hearing a report on the campaign, recommendations from the ONE Wake Strategy Team, and testimony from a half-dozen leaders, we took an open vote on which of the top priorities that we will focus on for research and exploration over the summer to turn them into tangible, winnable issues.

The results of the vote quickly became clear: ONE Wake's next grassroots agenda will focus on Housing, Mental Health, and Public Transportation! 

ONE Wake members also overwhelmingly voted for a second round of listening over the summer to complete our pledged goal of speaking to 2,100 people. We will use this round of listening to hear reactions to our new priority areas, understand how people's lives are impacted by these concerns, and to learn how each priority concern shows up in our local context.

Pictures on our Facebook here

Full video available on YouTube here

What's Next: Research Action Teams

Our next steps are to take these large, overwhelming priorities and do the research necessary to break them down into smaller, tangible, winnable issues. We will do this through forming ad hoc teams that we call “Research Action Teams” to work with ONE Wake’s Strategy Team and staff organizers to lead this research, and to make proposals action for approval by the ONE Wake membership. 

Research includes organizing meetings with subject matter experts, as well as our proposed second round of listening to better understand people’s experiences with these priorities. This next phase of organizing will play out over the summer and into the fall.

Research Action Teams with action proposals that connect to the fall municipal elections will be asked to bring a proposal to ONE Wake’s next Internal Assembly on August 31. Otherwise, all teams will be asked to submit an action proposal by December 1 at the latest.

You can sign up for a research action team, and find more resources on ONE Wake's website here. Next week we will send scheduling emails to all who sign up in order to find the best time for the initial meetings for each team.

https://www.onewake.org/research_action_team_resources