When Community Works: Care, Connection, and Collective Resilience with Julika von Stackleberg

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Hi, welcome to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Erin Carlson Rivera.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: And I’m Jessica Beckendorf. Today, we’re talking about community resilience, what it looks like in practice, and how people can come together in ways that truly support one another. I am so excited for this conversation, because I had the pleasure of meeting our guest in person and hearing about her impactful work last summer while at a conference.

Erin, let’s get started and introduce our guest.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Our guest today is Julika von Stuckelberg. Julika is a family and community resource educator with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Orange County, where she works at the intersection of parenting education, community development, and systems change.

She’s a credentialed parenting educator and a certified coach who focuses on creating environments where people feel a genuine sense of belonging and support.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Her work spans everything from trauma-informed parenting programs [00:01:00] to designing community-based learning experiences that help people build resilience together.

Julika also leads the Orange County Resilience Project, co-chairs the Orange County Parenting Coalition, and plays a role in shaping resilience efforts across New York State. At the heart of her work is a simple but powerful question: “How do we build communities that care for people in ways that are lasting, adaptive, and deeply human?

Hi, Julika. Thank you so much for joining us on Practicing Connection.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Hi. It’s so lovely to be here. Thank you so much for having me and for this very sweet introduction. I always get excited to have these conversations.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes, me too. Although when I’m in your shoes, I’m always a little bit like, “Ooh, did I really do all that? Did I?!”

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Same.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Well, let’s actually start at a really nice and simple place. Can you share a little bit more about your role at Cornell Cooperative Extension and what drew you to this work around community resilience? [00:02:00]

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah, absolutely. So I actually started at Cornell Cooperative Extension a little over 10 years ago as a parenting educator.

And I came into this field really because I have three children. And when they were little, I heard myself saying things or words coming out of my mouth that I didn’t really ever expect would come out and that, that I told myself I would never say to my children. And so I discovered eventually that, you know, I didn’t know what else to say to my children.

And in the process of searching for what I could say, I found that there were lots and lots of resources for parents to raise their children that really supported them and provided some kind of questions and ways to look at my own life that uncovered that it wasn’t just myself, it was also my upbringing and the broader network of, you know, the people that brought me up and so [00:03:00] forth.

And long story short, I came to Cornell Cooperative Extension as a parenting educator. And when I, in the process, learned about the impact of trauma on our health and well-being and where that trauma comes from, oftentimes from, you know, adverse childhood experiences that we have as we grow up in our families that are supposed to be the safe places and in the communities that are supposed to be the safe places, I became really curious about what we can do to make these places more nurturing for children to grow up into healthy adults in the long term.

That’s really what sort of sparked my interest in community building is about creating the sort of environments where parents, grandparents, people in all generation across the lifespan can thrive.

So that’s what broadened my parenting work very much from, you know, working one-on-one with parents to parenting [00:04:00] workshops and other supports, to really thinking about community building and the structures that we live in, and what do we need in order to be able to thrive?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Wow. That’s awesome. I would imagine, you know, places that are really nurturing for children might also be places that are nurturing for adults as well.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yes. Yes. And it’s healing backwards sometimes what I say, you know? And it’s not just our parents, of course. We do what we do with the knowledge that we have and the best intentions most of the time. It’s really the conditions that can make it hard. So how can we support or create the sort of buffer zones for when things happen that are hard that can allow people to recover and thrive?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. So before this call, you shared about your Community Resilience Builder Program that is now about to start its fourth cohort. What surprised you most about how participants show up for one [00:05:00] another over those nine or ten months of the cohort?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah. So the program is really awesome in that it speaks to an intergenerational sort of group of participants.

So we’ve had this last year, the youngest participant was 14 when she started. So she was a freshman in high school. And the oldest participant is someone who’s about to retire. So we really have a very diverse group of people who come from different backgrounds, different ages, different life experiences with different interests.

And finding a place that these individuals all somehow have an interest in building, you know, healthy and resilient communities where they can regenerate well-being. And hearing the conversations and the perspectives of these different people is one of the things that surprised me the most in [00:06:00] just the ways that they are able to support one another, have empathy for one another, have interest in one another, and really care for one another.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s awesome. I’m actually wondering if this would be a good time for you to maybe just share a little bit about what that program is too, because that’s one of the reasons why I reached out to you, was I knew about this program, you had presented about it at the conference. So if you could tell us a little bit about that, then we won’t have to ask you, keep asking you all these questions as we go along.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah. So this program is basically a nine-month or ten-month program, that the tenth month is really the graduation and collective evaluation. But it’s a ten-month journey that participants go on where they learn frameworks that support well-being. And so in this, I look at resilience as a mechanism towards regenerating well-being.

If we have to be [00:07:00] resilient all of the time, then there is something in our environment that is causing a pressure that maybe isn’t something that we can individually adapt to as easily. But if we’re able to tap into the ability of being resilient, and there are specific ways that we can do that by having protective factors in place, by learning tools to having dialogues, et cetera, we end up being able to regenerate well-being as a community.

And so this ten-month program really goes through this journey where people learn about public health, they learn about leadership, they learn about community development and dialogues, and so forth. And this is a master volunteer program.

So in other words, people are, as a result, they become expertly trained volunteers who can then help to give workshops in the community or help [00:08:00] find ways to integrate specific ways to increase resilience in the classroom or for teachers or families or, you know, families who are experiencing a lot of change, like military families, really putting in place those mechanisms that can allow them to tap into their resilience so that they can regenerate well-being.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow, that sounds great.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I know, I know. Like I keep saying, I want this to spread everywhere. So we’ve been spending here at OneUp a little bit of time with a 2020 article from the Journal of Community Psychology called Connecting Experiences of Community, Shared Responsibility, and Collective Competence to the Well-being of Adults and Military Families by O’Neil, Mancini and Bowen.

And the reason I give this huge preamble before asking this question is because one of the things they describe in this article is what they call a “synergistic community,” where people both feel a genuine sense [00:09:00] of caring for one another and actually act on it together. And I see your program as something that activates that, that makes this operational.

And so in your experience running your program, do those two things, the feeling and the action, tend to show up together or does one tend to come first?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: That’s a good question. I thought about that for a while, and I think that one might come before the other at a certain time. But I think in general, when you have some actions that you can take together and you’re creating sort of a space where specific feelings can be possible, that’s really what sort of creates that type of an environment or the space or this energy, the synergy that comes from that.

And oftentimes these things, you know, don’t happen by themselves. But the synergy, I think, really can be generated by [00:10:00] holding a space and allowing for specific actions to take place so that then, you know, the feelings can somehow really integrate. I think that’s really where there’s so much power in a framework like that.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Where do you see, well, you work for Cooperative Extension. And so, you know, you clearly see a role for Extension in this, but thinking globally about Extension and how they can play a role in holding that space, how do you see that playing out? Do you think Extension has a broader role, or were you just kind of lucky that your research kind of matched up with what your community wanted?

Yeah, I know that’s a really complex question.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah. I actually think that’s exactly the mission of Extension, is to create these spaces where community members can apply and utilize the resources that might be introduced to them, but also their own knowledge. There’s so much knowledge [00:11:00] within the communities, and, you know, oftentimes, that’s what we bring back to the university and say, like, look, “This is what people are experiencing and what they know.”

And then universities design research around that. So it’s really this back and forth, but I do think it is an Extension opportunity to create these spaces where community members can gather, whether it’s in forms of workshops or special intergenerational events or in support groups or make and take events where that can be generated.

But I do think that Extensions can do better when they have that purpose with them.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mmhmm.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: You know, and really apply these questions that can sort of open up the participants to share their knowledge, to experience those feelings that sometimes help them process their lived [00:12:00] experience, but also find solutions and really connect in the process with others.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love that your work is so focused, not only on just teaching people things, but helping them be connected with each other. I find personally that I learn best when I’m in a community where we engage with each other. And there’s almost this, like, magical thing that happens where you start applying things before you realize you’re applying things that you’re learning.

And that’s so lovely. So your work centers on communities of belonging. What does belonging look like when it’s genuinely present? What signs can people look for? How do you know it when you see it?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Mm-hmm. So I think when we feel like we belong, we have a sense of, you know, we’re safe, we can let our guard down, we can fully participate, that our contributions are [00:13:00] valued and that we really matter.

And there’s three pillars that we often talk about in creating a space that provides that is when people feel connected and they feel safe and able to regulate themselves. So that means sort of where you’re really able to tap into your own knowledge, where you can fully show up as yourself. And also sometimes there’s nuance, you know, that doesn’t just mean everything is always in agreement and kumbaya.

It’s really about being able to speak your mind and having conversations. So I think you see belonging when people really show up with nuances that they have in themselves. Like our 14-year-old participant, at first, she was maybe more withheld and cautious and quiet. And now she skips in the room. She says, “Hi, how are you? How was your month? [00:14:00] Or your week?” And, “What can I do to help set up?” And asking questions.

And you see people genuinely care for each other and show interest. And that’s when you can see that people have a sense of belonging.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, I think this is incredible. I think that in everything you’re saying, it’s really clear that the sense of the people around you accept you, or I’m not sure, I’m kind of struggling with a word here to find, but I’ll say that the people around you accept you for who you are.

It’s really clear that that shows up and is important. And it is supported by that research I mentioned earlier that, in fact, that feeling might actually matter more to people’s well-being than visible community action alone. So the community coming together to address problems.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Mmhmm.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Which was also found to be really important in the research, but that this feeling might actually matter more.

So let’s get into some of the details of your program a little bit, because how [00:15:00] is that cultivated, right? You just mentioned a change in the 14-year-old that was in the program from kind of being more reserved to them feeling like they can be themselves. So how do you cultivate that in your program?

What are some of the practices or structures that seem to actually move people from being polite to actually genuinely caring about each other?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: So one of the things that we do is we try to have a variety of ways that people engage with one another. Sometimes people spend time reflecting for themselves and then sharing out with everyone their thoughts.

And that’s all we want to hear, is we don’t want to have canned answers. All of it is valid, what people experience. And then we also have pair activities and smaller group activities. And so one thing that I have learned is oftentimes people often shy away at first from really wanting to engage in that way because it’s [00:16:00] uncomfortable at first to, you know, speak out or to talk to a certain person.

And I have learned as the facilitator not to give into people’s discomfort, and try to make them feel comfortable, but really trusting in the fact that, “I know they will really get something out of it.”

And so I think when facilitators can hold that space without purposefully making people uncomfortable, but really with this knowledge that they will grow from that and they will have experiences.

And trusting in that, you create opportunities for people to really learn to listen. And practicing active listening in the sense that it’s really, you know, we have activities, in fact, where we, in a circle, each person listens to a different aspect of the story that a person shares. And by the person [00:17:00] reporting out on what they listen to, they really create this big dimension of a reality and a lived experience that is valid and that means something.

So this idea of mattering really is supported in that process. And I think that’s how you build trust. It’s creating opportunities for building relationships and connections and finding similarities, which we do with icebreakers as well at the very beginning and sort of builds along the program.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I always tell people that, especially people who really hate icebreakers, that the facilitator usually has a very distinct, but perhaps unshared, purpose for having that specific icebreaker, right?

So there’s always a purpose for the icebreakers and they can be a really important part of starting to build that trust, like you said.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: And I think sometimes sharing the purpose is important too, because [00:18:00] you basically model tools that they can then apply.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. Especially in a volunteer training program, right?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Exactly.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Which is what this is. And, you mentioned that they become volunteers and that they can deliver workshops and things like that. What is the most common thing that they do with their volunteer time?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah. So we’re just launching the fourth cohort. And the cohorts are relatively small.

So we have, like, plus/minus ten people. So we’re just kind of beginning to have that number of volunteers available to do certain things. But in the past, we actually had some funding to start a climate action group in a community that then looked at what might be some nature-based solutions to address flooding that was particularly of a danger in that specific [00:19:00] geographical area.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: And so this group came up with this whole idea of a ‘sunflower city’ project, engaging their community and planting more sunflowers, because those have deep roots that can loosen the soil to make it more absorbable. And so this idea of resilience is multiple.

It’s, one, you are creating actually a physical environment that might be less prone to as much flooding, but you’re also creating a community that has greater awareness and connection by sharing these ideas and thinking about that.

And so some of the community resilience builders were really instrumental in bringing that group together and finding a space where these meetings could be housed and that sort of thing. But in the future, yeah, we’re hoping for engagement to address some ways that can make our communities physically more adaptable to [00:20:00] severe weather events or the effects of those.

But not just from an infrastructure perspective, really also a social perspective, making sure people know where to go for cooling stations and food pantries and that sort of thing. And then practicing ways to reduce stress, you know?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. That sounds like a really incredible ripple effect from the work.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: As you were talking, I just saw this, like, city where, like, sunflowers everywhere, and it seems like it’s probably a very joyful place because they’re such happy, vibrant flowers. I love that image. I don’t know if that’s actually what it looks like, but thank you for sharing that.

So I’m really intrigued as you’ve been describing kind of how this program works for the participants and then what they do afterwards. You had mentioned earlier helping military families. And I know a lot of your programming really focuses on building connections between people.

And [00:21:00] military families are frequently relocating, and they have a lot of transitions which can disrupt that sense of community connection. How do you think about building community with or for people who are a little bit more transient or have temporary roots in a community?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah. So I think, you know, that’s where real concrete tools can be incredibly powerful. I mean, I want to say that, you know, luckily, we have the ability to Zoom and to stay connected through video chats and that sort of thing. So the relationships that we often build or that families can build can continue, even if it’s not always in person.

But apart from that, I think really focusing on developing a culture so that people and families can fit in quicker, because there are certain aspects that’s part of a culture is really important. And I [00:22:00] think also that, participation in developing the culture and cultivating the culture is important.

So giving people opportunities to contribute and to share their knowledge and what they know. And then having protective factors or understanding the importance of protective factors such as parental resilience, social connections, concrete supports in times of need, that sort of thing really helps families to understand that their own agency in the process of creating that resilience and their ability to adapt to the changes that they’re going through and to come back to a sense of well-being is really important.

And so providing tools for that, and kind of encouragement and support is a way that I think particularly families who are moving [00:23:00] around a lot and who are under high pressure situations can definitely contribute to that.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That makes a lot of sense. I love this idea of building an environment that people can come into and easily connect with.

I’m not a super transient person, and I also have had moments of moving where I’m like, “I don’t even, like, how do I start? Like, where’s the door? Where’s the inroad to, like, actually being with people?”

So I love that you’re doing all of this work to help communities build those things together.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And actually, thinking about the people who work with military families every day, like counselors, family readiness officers, extension educators, or other extension educators besides you, Julika, what’s one thing that these service providers can do or try to help the community around them become a little more connected?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: I think, really consciously creating spaces that are [00:24:00] welcoming. Consciously cultivating relationships. I have to give credit to another educator in Cornell Cooperative Extension who recently was talking about how she really prepares her workshops with a personal email that gets sent to every registrant beforehand, with saying something personal that shows you it’s not AI.

It’s not something canned. You know, a part of it might be canned, but you recognize yourself in it. And then just how people come in with, like, the way the space is set up, it matters. And then the same thing, having activities within the program that allows people to connect. We are all incredibly overstimulated with information that becomes really hard to digest.

And so not trying to offer more information and more resources, but [00:25:00] really more reminding people about what they already know in those opportunities that educators and people working with the families really get to ask these questions. So make it less about adding on a lot of information, but really reminding the families and individuals what they already know.

And then following up the same way and letting folks know where they can connect again and how to reach out to someone else or making a summary of what they experienced and how lovely it was that they made the time to come, and what they might’ve gotten out of it. So it’s really intentional relationship building.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: When I think about the things it takes to do the intentional relationship building, I can see exactly why, or one of the reasons why it’s so easy to just skip past it and go to, “Okay, what are the actions we can do [00:26:00] instead?” right? What are the outputs we can create together? Or, what are the outputs we are going to create together?

And kind of skipping over it, because it takes so much time to do these things. And what we measure are the outputs, not the inputs and not the beautiful little moments that happen when someone starts to feel like they belong, or those little kind of clues and those things that people say and the caring that’s developing and the trust that’s developing.

Those are not the things we’re measuring. We’re measuring the outputs that people do together. And I’m not saying that that’s bad. We have to have some outputs too. In a lot of cases, we need to have some outputs and some things that we’re doing together. It’s something that has been on my mind for years.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Mm-hmm.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. I, it’s not really a question in that, Julika, I’m just –

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: The point that you’re making is so good. And so when we’re, you know, in a model that oftentimes measures growth [00:27:00] or ways that we look at outputs or outcomes as a way to indicate whether or not we have reached our goal, it does not necessarily allow us to measure well-being.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: And that’s part of, I think, this whole mind shift that we’re trying to also look at in this community resilience builder is what might be indicators, you know? And it doesn’t mean you scratch all of your other indicators, right. You know, things are useful, but we need more depth.

And so that means really taking on another lens to look at the way that we develop programs and we conduct programs and review them.

I’m really big on participation. So participatory evaluations and ways that we can incorporate that oftentimes reveals much more of the depth and can provide or lead us to more indicators that we might want to look at in the [00:28:00] process.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm. Awesome, thank you. I love that idea of taking this, “Oh, but that’s not stuff we measure,” and saying, “Okay, well, how are we gonna measure it?”

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yes. Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So what does it take for a community to keep showing up for people over the long haul, especially if people keep changing in your community?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: So you want to think about everyone who is a participant in this whole project, so to speak. And that means including educators, including, you know, service providers, counselors, et cetera.

They are not just the ones always creating the community. They are also the ones that are participating in it and really creating spaces through coalitions, through professional development and opportunities for those who keep creating these spaces to come together and really [00:29:00] reflect on what they’re doing and understanding the impact that they have.

And cultivating that, I think, is really important in the process as well. I think it translates into those who come and change communities who can take something with them and are able to apply or inform, and hopefully create some continuity with their own transient nature in that sense. So, yeah, I think you have to really take everyone into consideration.

And I want to say too that, you know, the “careers,” in quotation marks, that counselors and educators and so forth have is not for major profit. These are fields that are leading to great financial rewards, but the rewards that people get from really building these relationships and seeing [00:30:00] how they can contribute to the well-being within their communities is actually priceless.

And with that, I’m not trying to diminish the cost of living that is increasing et cetera, but it’s really an aspect that we can further cultivate as a way to help people to gain some return and that keeps them going.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Okay. Thank you.

So this is something that I am very curious about, and I would love for you to explain it to our listeners.

So you’ve been researching social imaginaries as tools for community transition. Without getting too academic about it, which the term itself kind of sounds like that would be very difficult, what does it mean to help a community imagine itself differently? And how does that connect to the kind of resilience that you’re building?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah. So just to kind of backtrack for [00:31:00] a second, so the social imaginary, as you said, it’s kind of a philosophical term of describing how so much of what we do and how we organize our communities is tied to a collective, like a vision that we all have for ourselves. A lot of the research that I’ve been doing around that is really better understanding how different social imaginaries lead to different ways of how we invent and develop things and respond to challenges in our communities.

And so, you know, sometimes I think it’s really hard for us to imagine that our communities could be any different because the problems that we have seem so overwhelming, and they just seem too many to change. And so kind of going a little bit more at the root of what is it that’s [00:32:00] behind all of this, I think can sometimes help us to maybe take more of a, you know, eagle-eye perspective in a sense that you zoom out and you look at what does a community look like that regenerates well-being?

And how does it do that? What kind of infrastructure does that require?

As an example, if you were thinking about planetary well-being and how we, humans are part of nature and nature is part of us, how would we design a city, for example? And if you understand that, you know, insects are traveling also over certain pathways, then we might think about ways, if we consider the well-being of insects and pollinators, we might think about how we can build corridors for insects to travel through a city or urban areas in a way [00:33:00] that sustains their well-being.

And so if we think about that, or kind of take a lens that connects our well-being, or really shows the interconnectedness between all things living including humans as a way or a social imaginary, how we think about the world and how we see ourselves, then that might help inform how we build our communities.

And what we really need that is not tied to some of the structures that might think about, you know, business development as an area of growth to generate wealth or profit in some ways.

And so it just kind of gives us a way to think about some of the complex problems that we work with. I will say that with the arrival of artificial [00:34:00] intelligence and questions that come along with that, including how are we supporting it through data centers and how our data centers run, so many of the people who are making, or are forced to make, really big decisions around zoning, et cetera, they’re volunteers in our municipalities.

And how are we expecting them to understand the complexities of these really new questions? And so social imaginaries as a tool, I like to look at healing-informed social imaginaries. So imaginaries that really understand the impact of trauma on our health and well-being long-term, as well as the factors that allow us to tap into resilience so we can regenerate well-being.

Those kinds of imaginaries help us to wrestle with the questions. It doesn’t provide answers, but it gives [00:35:00] us an opportunity to think about it in ways that we might not have been able to think about.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: In ways that don’t just sort of skip through all of the really needed conversation and perspective-taking that needs to happen, just trying to go right to solutions that kind of enrich our ability to grapple with the questions and test solutions down the road.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: I’m so glad you just jumped in because that’s exactly it. Yes?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow. Well, this has been such a fun interview. And one thing that has, I’m still really curious about is, it sounds like a lot of this work is kind of long-term work. Like you don’t necessarily see impacts right away. So I’m curious, do you have any stories or moments from your work that really keep you going, or remind you why the work that you’re doing matters?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: That is such a good point, and I’m glad you’re asking the [00:36:00] question because that really is the hard part about this work. So much, you don’t really know. I don’t necessarily see the impact. And yet, the connections that you build when you hear people’s reflections or you suddenly see someone taking an interest or an action up, that’s just incredibly affirming.

And yes, it doesn’t fit into the regular reports that we check on or indicators, again, that we can measure. And so what you are sort of reminding me of too is to emphasize this need to continue to build touch points in the long term for people, but that aren’t necessarily built on just transactions, but really the transformative aspect of the relationships that are being built.

And I think we can probably do a better job on this. I hope [00:37:00] that we learn how to do this better. There’s only so many hours in the day, and there are only so many people who are involved in this. And we have only so many resources.

So it’s okay, but it’s definitely something I want to get better at building these conscious long-term relationships and check-in points in a way that are meaningful for everyone involved.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mmhmm.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love that. I think sometimes, especially if you really build a community with a cohort that has an end date, thinking about transitioning that into long-term relationships is such an interesting challenge. And I can see why, especially with this kind of a master volunteer setup, there’s almost a little bit more built-in touch points to make sure you don’t completely lose touch.

So I can see how the structure really works for the benefit of the community. And I think that’s not just the community at large, but the community of [00:38:00] people in the cohort. I think that’s really beautiful.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, let’s end on this. What is giving you hope right now? Is there a story or a moment from your work recently that kind of reminded you why all of this matters?

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Hmm. We recently had a conference where we really focused on the knowledge that was already in the room. So as opposed to having a lot of experts come and speak, we had an activity that was with four chairs on a stage, and a question about the future that was, “What kind of wisdom do you think we will need in the future?”

Or, “What do you hope to see in your community in the future?” Or, “What would really let you know that your community’s well in the future?”

So we asked these questions, and the people who came to the stage and to one of those four chairs were invited to come and speak for two minutes on these questions.[00:39:00]

And I was really worried that no one would get up, because people feel uncomfortable about public speaking. But we had so many rounds of people to come up and speak and share their thoughts. And there wasn’t one person who talked about material things in that sense. They really all talked about connection, cultivating relationships, being in person as opposed to always on the phones or on screens.

And that gave me so much hope to see that people want this. They were all kind of talking about how they long for connection with people in their neighborhoods and communities and opportunities to really get to know each other and having spaces for that. And that gave me a lot of hope.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hmm. I’ve been feeling [00:40:00] that for a while.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Mmhmm.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I think people are really kind of hungry for this connection. So, thank you so much for the work that you do. And of course, thank you so much for joining us, Julika.

JULIKA VON STACKLEBERG: Yes. And you too as well. And the beautiful conversations that you hold on things that matter. I appreciate that. And all the families putting their best foot forward.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Everyone’s just trying their best. No, thank you so much.

Julika von Stuckelberg is team leader in family and community development at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Orange County, New York. And I could just keep talking to you all day.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Well, that’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’d like to thank our announcer, Kaylin Gobel-Mathis, Maggie Lucas, and Joyce Vaughn for their help with marketing, and Nathan Grimm, who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast. [00:41:00] We hope you’ll listen again soon.

Until then, keep practicing.

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.