At the heart of the Lazarus strategy has been a conceptual approach to leadership development, adapted from the most effective strategies in community organizing. Such an approach stresses the import ance of ongoing discussion about core civic ideas, deepened and integrated as people apply them in daily work. Concepts include politics itself, public spaces and their difference from private environments, the diversity of interests, and power conceived as interactive and relation al. Teaching civic concepts develops competence in critical thinking , debate, and reflection. More subtly but perhaps most importantly, it generates the kind of robust political self-confidence that has been lost in modern life, but which is especially critical to any process of democratizing information and service environments.
Civic concepts are especially difficult to introduce and bring to life in a nursing home setting.
The focus is on care, nurturance, and rehabilitation, not on building strategic relationships to solve common problems. Yet the introduction of civic concepts can also work dramatic change. However much against the grain, staff, family, and residents also desire a more open, public process of conversation that brings tough and difficult problems to the surface, instead of suppressing them. A poignant example occurred early in the project, when a chaplain intern remarked to a joint committee of residents and staff that it was hard for her to see so many people die. Augustana, like most nursing homes, avoided ope n discussion of death.