Common Focus Can Help:
About Us
Jon Abercrombie,
Director of Common Focus
Jon is the past Executive Director of FCS Urban Ministries, and
the founder of Charis Community Housing in Atlanta, Georgia. Currently
Jon is the Director of Common Focus,
which designs and leads organizational and community dialogues.
Community Building and Facilitation Experience:
Jon leads planning and visioning retreats for nonprofit, for profit
and governmental organizations including groups of elected officials.
He also does leadership development and facilitation for lower
income urban neighborhoods.
He has facilitated planning and work retreats for governmental
groups like the State Department of Community Affairs, the Regional
Water Commission, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners, the
City of Decatur, the City of Fayetteville, NC, and the City of
Marietta, GA. In addition he has facilitated the work of nonprofits
like World Relief, The Bridge Family Center, Atlanta Pride, Project
Open Hand, Prison Fellowship International and The Community Foundation
of Greater Atlanta. He is a regular facilitator for the work retreats
of the DeKalb County Commissioners. He also facilitated the
first Metro Mayor's Forum and the Atlanta Board of Education's
Re-zoning Taskforce.
He developed a grass root community development course for Oglethorpe
University and for the School of City Planning at the Georgia Institute
of Technology. He also is a designer and a leader of the statewide
course on affordable housing offered to elected municipal officials
for the Department of Community Affairs.
Decatur Round Tables: Building Community Wide Participation
Jon initiated and led the Decatur Round Tables — a series
of small group sessions intended to build community and civic involvement.
These initial dialogue groups spawned a city-wide strategic planning
process that was led by many of the citizens from those groups.
[ Read
about the Decatur Round Tables ]
Jon led the City of Decatur schools in a similar dialogue. More
than 400 people were involved.
Jon is now a Senior Associate of the national Study Circle Resource
Center in Connecticut. He trains facilitators and leads community-wide
conversations for citizen engagement across the country.
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