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Communities across the country will participate in this program. As they do, a nation of leaders and communities will have convened thousands of people to co-create more prosperous conditions for all residents. With this amount of focused attention and action, important insights will emerge (particularly related to the evaluation questions), ultimately on a national scale. The roll up activities of PCPN will ensure that the results and learning occurring at the local level are leveraged toward broader and higher-level action. This allows communities to impact state and national strategies that will continue to benefit each community long after their Prosperous Community Future Search session.
Along with the Learning Community Activity, the primary roll up activity is the national Future Search session, focused on creating policy-specific commitments.
After every eight Prosperous Community sessions have taken place across the country, a Policy Development session will be convened among the local, state, and Federal officials (and/or others at the community's discretion) who participated as stakeholders in the Community sessions. This conference will be similarly designed and include the policy stakeholder/participants from all of the Community sessions, as well as other stakeholders in developing and implementing policy at the Federal, state, and local levels. This session will use the collective learning from the Community sessions as a basis for its work. The Policy Development session will build on the original commitments participants made in the Community sessions and create new, policy-specific commitments. Since many of the participants in the Policy Development session are stakeholders in both the community and the policy development "system," the combination of the Community and Policy Development sessions will help create a link between and joint ownership among communities and policy makers for new ways of addressing poverty, building capacity, and supporting prosperity for all.
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