A Wisdom Council is a simple, inexpensive and rapid way of boosting ordinary citizens' ability to organize themselves and to shoulder responsibility.

Suitable

• for creatively developing and implementing solutions to tricky issues
• for boosting ordinary citizens' degree of involvement and grasp of the meaning of democracy

Sequence of events

A Wisdom Council consists of twelve citizens selected at random, who spend two days together, first identifying issues of public interest in their surroundings and then developing proposals for improving/solving these issues. They are assisted in this by a dynamic facilitator, who helps the participants to discover what they actually want and how they can creatively develop communal solutions to seemingly insoluble problems. The emphasis here is on the dynamics of the group's ability to organize itself. In the course of the dynamic facilitation better results with a greater degree of consensus are achieved more rapidly than with other methods, thanks to this empowerment approach and to focussing on the energy of the group.

The Wisdom Council's findings are put on record in a statement which is presented publicly. At this point the Wisdom Council is dissolved. Following the final presentation, all residents have an opportunity to discuss the issue(s), e.g. in study groups. It is a good idea to set up a new Wisdom Council at intervals (every four months): the new council selects issues of its own and comments on earlier council statements. In the course of time this process results in statements which most residents support. In actual practice this approach of involving and empowering everyone in a system – a city, an association, an authority or an entire state – has produced good results. 

Points to note:

• Each participant speaks only for him or herself, not for an interest group;
• At the selection stage criteria such as gender, age, location of residence etc. should be taken into account, so as to obtain a representative cross-section of the population;
• The quality of the results improves if new Wisdom Councils are held at intervals.