Community Economic Development
The Right Question Strategy has been used to help individuals advocate for themselves regarding both personal and community-wide economic problems.
Examples
- On the Big Island of Hawaii, after 100 years of operation, yet another sugar cane plantation was being shut down in order to find a cheaper labor force overseas. Employees and their families faced the end of their jobs as well as the elimination of company-supplied housing and health care. TheHawaii Department of Health invited RQI staff to help residents learn skills to advocate for themselves and navigate the various systems they would be dealing with. Soon, residents of the plantations were focusing on these key decisions: the allocation of job training funds, determination of land use of the sugar cane fields, provision of health care, and assignment of former company-owned housing.
- At the other end of the United States, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, local residents faced economic crisis, this time in the fishing industry. Community organizations in New Bedford used training by RQI to prepare a "community questioning" process that put pressure on local, state and federal decision-making bodies to address the employment, job training and educational needs of residents hurt by the economic changes.
Voices From the Field
Now when I go to meetings where people are making decisions that really affect my family I don't have to just sit there, not knowing what to say. I think about what I want to know and what I need to know and then I ask the question. What a difference!
Laid-off worker, Hawaii