Community Culture & Diversity

Diversity Awareness (73 Responses)

• Build awareness of all groups (ethnic, religious, income levels and special needs)
• Disseminate information about diversity
• Offer classes about diversity to all in community
• Be open, understanding, accepting and embracing to different cultures and diversity
• Need better understanding of different people coming into our community
• Help newcomers feel welcome
• Help groups of people from other nations feel at home
• Hold more cultural events (Mexican fiesta)
• Promote a more diverse community
• Dispel ignorance
• Provide cultural exchange opportunities
• Increase diversity in city, county and school staff
• Integrate changing demographics as positive force in community
• Have people from other nations teach us
• Encourage more awareness of world events
• Have honest conversations about prejudice
• Have translators for different languages
• See diversity as a strength and something desirable
• Find ways to manage, include and engage our diverse citizen base
• Meet needs of diverse kids and families
• Avoid creating tribalistic attitudes about diversity
• Help diverse citizens develop smaller communities within the larger community
• Address challenges related to having small amount of diversity

Involvement and Service (27 Responses)

• Create a public information source to promote service opportunities
• Hold an annual volunteer effort to help your neighbor and promote a sense of community
• Develop a citizen action committee to bring about changes
• Establish a community volunteer program
• Have mandatory community service for all
• Provide opportunities to serve people they do not usually come in contact with: elderly, persons with low income and the homeless
• Maximize volunteers
• Broaden scope of volunteer activities
• Find more creative ways to engage residents
• Refocus from “being the best” to helping students and community get involved and gain a sense of community
• Teach children to give of their time, not just collect food and money
• Need more volunteerism in young adults
• Address challenges to volunteering: busy lifestyles, difficulty in finding volunteers, people caught up in their own lives and don’t focus on others, lack of sense of community, parents are not involved and not teaching children to be involved

Building Relationships (20 Responses)

• Bring diverse people together (students of private and public school, people from different nations and economic classes)
• Need to create and maintain “sense” of community
• Hold more community bonding events and gatherings (celebration days, barbeques, outdoor or indoor concerts and sledding outings)
• Create more unity among the masses
• Need neighborhood gatherings to promote becoming acquainted
• Create more neighborhood associations in the suburbs
• Promote programs and services to those on the fringes
• Include Valley Junction more often
• Celebrate our strengths
• Develop balance between self and community
• Support one another as we slow down
• Think together less linearly

Stereotypes and Reputation (19 Responses)

• Recognize needs of neighborhoods with lower income in the metro
• Minimize emphasis on “being the best”
• Need to change attitude of realtors that “west” is the only place to live in Des Moines area
• Need more involvement in metro community, (i.e. Programs with Zoo, Botanical Center, Events Center)
• Build on fine reputation of our schools
• Emphasize West Des Moines as a great place to live, be employed, raise families and stay
• Develop sense that “we” is more important than “me”
• Deal affirmatively with perceived racism and classism, lack of inclusiveness
• Acknowledge and examine perceptions that West Des Moines is rich, affluent, proud and uncaring about metro and state issues

Values (11 Responses)

• Have gratitude for what we have and develop willingness to share
• Learn to be honest, fair, caring, respectful, more considerate and less self-centered
• Maintain Midwest work ethic
• Promote healthy lifestyles
• Slow down to speak from the heart
• Take responsibility for actions, especially our young people
• Be cautious of “out with the old” mentality at election time (need solid governance)
• Don’t overlook the individual in order to promote big business

Divisions (9 Responses)

• Address conditions that create divisions: area is segmented (Des Moines, Clive, Windsor Heights, Urbandale), Valley Junction neighborhood has been stereotyped, It is difficult for non-family people to fit in a family-based community
• Need to diminish mentalities about haves and have-nots, east side and west side, one high school and two high schools

Religion (6 Responses)

• Hold “mixed” faith events for youth groups of all churches
• Partner with churches to do positive things in the community
• Put more focus on God and religion
• Increase cooperation among churches, work on uniform objectives, decrease divisions
• Have more faith-based community celebrations
• Have schools and churches work together