The Aging Plunge was so successful in developing a new model or concept for aging that it was expanded and used by Memorial Hospital to help educate board members, administrators, staff and other community leaders about a wide variety of community issues and needs. Some of the plunges that evolved throughout the next several years included such topics as: housing and homelessness, domestic violence, cultural diversity, neighborhoods and urban life.

For years before this exercise became known as a "plunge," Carl Ellison, Vice President, Community Affairs at Memorial Hospital, delivered, what he termed "alley tours" to individuals who would ask him to share his knowledge of South Bend. Carl believes that "If you really want to see conditions of neighborhoods its much better to drive through alleys and look at the backs of houses rather than driving along the street. The backs of houses are very revealing - they show the condition of the neighborhood they tell their own story." Carl would drive around the neighborhoods, through the alleys, and into places his passengers had never been before. This experience helped them to better understand community issues from a firsthand look at both the strengths and assets, as well as the places in need.

A community plunge is a way for people to become involved in the community and help improve the health status of those who live there. It is an effective way to find out "what's going on out there." Too often, the board room walls block our perspective of our own communities. Much of what we do "know" about our communities often comes from accounts in the local newspaper or other secondhand sources. A plunge offers leaders a way to actually participate in learning about their community at the grassroots level, while providing the opportunity to form the linkages that will be essential to creating a "healthier community." A plunge connects organizations with communities, puts faces on the statistics, and motivates people to act.

Why take a plunge?

A plunge is a valuable tool for getting back in touch with your community. Serving as a complement to more formal needs assessment surveys and other activities aimed at refocusing your organization on improving community health status, a plunge offers your leadership an experiential learning opportunity that puts them in touch with both the needs and strengths of the community your organization serves. By listening to people's personal stories, and by asking questions of the people they meet, plunge participants can develop a new understanding of the dynamics of their community.

That's particularly important today. Our communities demographic, social and economic landscapes have shifted significantly in the past few decades, leaving many of those who serve the public wondering if their time-tried efforts are still working. At the same time, our corporate structures have distanced us from our communities. A plunge, on the other hand, is action-oriented. It lets you look at Your community from the inside and become involved in learning about it from people who live there. Plunges are designed to seek out the positive. The idea is to find the strengths in your community, to identify assets and opportunities for partnerships that will create the positive foundations for a brighter future. After all, if you don't know where people's strengths are, it's difficult to meet their needs, says Michael Mather, Pastor of the Broadway Christian Parish in South Bend, who is among the area leaders who have opened their doors to the plunge experience.

Plunges are extremely useful experiences for board members, administrators, medical staff, community leaders and anyone who is in a decision-making role that impacts the quality of life in their community. The experience will be useful in:

Developing a better understanding of the assets and resources in your community

Creating partnerships that make the most effective use of your community's resources

Identifying unmet needs in the community

At Memorial, our efforts to help create a healthier community are rooted in our belief that health is as much a social, economic and environmental issue as it is a medical one. Educational plunges have served as valuable tools as we endeavor to learn as much about the people we serve as we can.

"Most of what makes people sick has very little to do with the medical care system," says medical futurist Leland Kaiser, Ph.D., whose vision of collaborative, community-based health care has helped guide Memorial's leadership. "The major variables of morbidity in a population are sanitation, nutrition, lifestyles, education and income. And most of those are outside the medical system.."

The plunge experiences have served very much as a "reality check" for our leadership, much as it will for you. They can provide your leadership with something tangible: An opportunity to meet real people in a real setting to get a better feel for what's really happening in your community. As your board, administrators and medical staff plot the future course for your organization, impressions from the plunge experience will help ensure that the decisions they make are on target with the needs and strengths of your community.

A plunge can take many different forms depending on the number of participants and objectives you set out to accomplish. Some plunges can involve as few as one or two people spending their day talking to residents in a neighborhood. Others might require a bus to carry participants from place to place. Plunge sites vary as well, from senior centers, soup kitchens and recreation centers to churches, schools and countless other places that serve a representative group of people. Some plunge participants, for instance, have examined the issue of homelessness over a meal at the local rescue mission. They have learned about barriers to health care for the elderly in the community by visiting with seniors at nutrition sites and day programs.

The general idea of a plunge, no matter what the setting, is to seek out the group of people you're interested in learning more about. Your goal is to meet with a representative group of people, (this number may vary widely, depending on the plunge setting, time allotted and other factors), ask questions about their lives and experiences (their experiences with access to local health services, for example), and to really listen to what they have to say. Free-flowing conversation is an essential element to a plunge. Try not to structure your plunge agenda so rigidly that it stifles a good exchange of ideas or issues that you might not have thought of beforehand.

Plunges are typically user-driven programs. In other words, you are asking people to allow a glimpse into their everyday lives. And you are asking them to lead, right down to helping you plan the plunge itself. For a plunge in a neighborhood on South Bend's southeast side, for example, Memorial approached residents of the neighborhood to help us find out what they thought would be important for plunge participants to know about their community. The Broadway Christian Parish served as a great source of support and helped "break the ice" with neighborhood residents. Memorial continues to have a strong and growing relationship with the southeast neighborhood to this day.

The same strategy applies to any kind of plunge you are thinking of organizing. Want to find out more about drug abuse in your community? Talk with people in drug rehabilitation programs. Want to learn more about juvenile crime? Talk to young offenders and their families. Teen-age pregnancy? Meet with young mothers. Let the people involved help plan your plunge to ensure a successful experience. This involvement builds trust and helps open doors that might otherwise be closed to you.

Other variations on the plunge experience can be provider-driven. For example, you may want to learn more about the services that are and are not available for the elderly in your community. As a result, you'll want to spend some time at program sites and discuss the services provided with representatives of the various agencies that serve the elderly population.

Keep in mind, however, that in a plunge experience it's more important to talk candidly with the people who actually use or need these services than service-providers. This reflects a view closest to the community issue the plunge explores. Listening to people who use services may be more timeconsuming or create different challenges for plunge participants, but focusing on service-users rather than providers is ultimately more effective. It's the most direct route to personal life stories, the main street of any plunge trip.

Agency or organization administrators should be aware that your project is about hearing from people who know the plunge issue from experience, not "experts" or people who work in the field. Time spent hearing from agency representatives should be carefully limited. Rich and insightful stories from unique individuals working personally with issues of aging, homelessness, growing up, or neighborhood development, lay waiting for plunge participants to take in and process. These journeys and the people who have lived them are the core of a successful plunge.

In a plunge, your preconceived notions must be put in neutral. Participants must open their ears, eyes and minds to the experience. You are not on a plunge to "tell" people what your organization is doing for them, you want to know what you and they are capable of doing together.