We want you at the table

Here’s our promise: Come to the table and you’ll be inspired. Better yet, you’ll inspire something—or someone else.

That’s the opportunity we have next week during the Quad Cities Big Table, a two-day effort designed to bring people together to cast a vision for the future of the Quad Cities. The Quad Cities Community Foundation is proud to join nearly 500 others as a host of three tables on Friday, April 20 at our offices.

We aspire for two things to happen. We want people like you who choose to attend to pour into the conversation, and we want those same people to walk away filled—with the ideas, inspiration, and energy to act in big, bold ways for our community’s future.

We believe the Big Table will foster an atmosphere in which people will feel free to share thoughts about the areas of our region that are great, and also those areas in which we could be better as a community. Strangers will rub elbows with strangers, acquaintances will meet again, and friends will reconnect. We hope that the discussions are robust and as diverse as the faces around the table.

That’s where you come in. We want you at the table—at our table, at someone else’s, or as a host of a table of your own. As a person who has invested in this region’s greatest needs and opportunities time and time again, you can offer insight and care into a conversation that has the potential to lead to solutions.

You can also invite others who may not typically be at the table, but should be—perhaps a colleague at work who just moved to the community, a neighbor who oftentimes sticks close to home, or a sibling who you know has an opinion that doesn’t often get heard. The only way our community’s future can be inclusive of our community is if we have all people at the table. That requires an invitation!

It’s amazing what kind of things can happen when you get different people in the same room, at the same table, in one conversation. The heart of this conversation can be simple: What kind of a community do we want for our children and grandchildren next year, and decades from now?

We all have a stake in the future of this region. Why not take an hour and to talk, listen, and maybe even laugh?

Learn more and sign-up to join our table, someone else’s, or become a host of your own.

We are hosting three tables on Friday, April 20 in our Community Room at 7:30am, 12 noon or 4:30pm. Our 12 noon table is now fully booked, but there is some availability at 7:30am and 4:30pm. To sign-up, just choose “Attend a Big Table at a Private Location,” and select "Community Foundation - Morning, or Afternoon.”

Melanie JonesEvent