Harnessing and Harvesting “The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People”
By April Doner
The first of a series on the learning, challenges and opportunities seen at Connecting4Community to shift to more citizen-centered, bottom-up ways of living and structuring our approaches to the problems we see around us.
Sensible Life ~ A Thought
By John McKnight
John reminds us that relationships in a personal world are the antidote to following the siren call of progress.
Seeing Blue
By Edd Conboy
Having to stand in line for this service or that program is one of the most powerful reinforcers of the scarcity mindset. It symbolizes helplessness, hopelessness and the constant concern that there is not enough ... and that it will run out just before it is my turn. Edd Conboy is doing something about that.
Resident-Centered Community Building: What Makes It Different?
by The Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, The Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change
"This is the first report that I have ever read that really feels 'community friendly,'" says Roque Barrios of San Diego. He's talking about the story of how local community building leaders came together to share strategies and discuss lessons learned about how to improve conditions in disadvantaged communities.…
Green Housing: In Buffalo, It's Not Just for Rich People Anymore
Can we build sustainable housing that's affordable, too? The city of Buffalo did, and created a community jobs pipeline in the process. Here's what can happen when neighborhoods take the lead.…
Why Unions Are Going Into the Co-op Business
by Amy Dean
From a food hub to industrial manufacturing to a commercial laundry and more, the United Steelworkers are experimenting with a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.…
How to Use Local Assets to Make Your Community Effective
Highlights from Peter and John's March 5 online/dial-up conversation with Mary Nelson, the founder and longtime Director of Bethel New Life, one of the nation's best neighborhood development organizations.…
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
by Nancy Sleeth
"Almost Amish" tips for supporting your local economy and building community with your neighbors.…
The Neighbor Project
Rodney Rutherford created a comfortable place for neighbors to come together and share their perspectives, knowledge and gifts. All it took was some gift-mindedness and a coffee machine.…
Growing Global Divisiveness Gets Disrupted
Ian Edwards discovers how three-person conversations can open space for creativity, build trusting relationships and counter the divisiveness we see every day.…
Three Steps to Building a Better Block
How can we drive change in our communities and move past stagnant committees and outdated regulation? Jason Roberts of Build a Better Block encourages us to stop waiting around. Even if that means painting in our own crosswalks and blackmailing ourselves into action…
A Gift from a Taxi Driver
by Gerard Ee
A young boy experiences community and the love that flows from it when a Singapore taxi driver sings "Jingle Bells."…
The Neighborhood Effect
The degree to which people trust and help each other may have more to do with a neighborhood's health and economic survival than indicators like income and foreclosure rates.…
Measuring and Evaluating Community Initiatives
by Peter Block, Tom Dewar
Highlights from Peter's April 16 online/dial-up conversation with Tom Dewar, co-director of the Aspen Institute’s Roundtable on Community Change and long-time member of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute.…
"The Well" ~ A Symbol of Healthy Community
The I Ching reading "The Well" is a symbol of community and offers a powerful expression of what a healthy and sustainable community could look like.…
Modern Mentoring
In response to a neighborhood’s concern about youth problems and violence, John takes a gifts-minded look at how to connect young people to productive adults and offer a means to express their own constructive capacities.…
Love Letters to Strangers
Hannah Brencher believes in the power of pen and paper, so she started a community that encourages strangers to exchange love letters.…
The Stranger
The full meaning of what it means to be a hospitable neighborhood and how our lives are enriched by welcoming people we don't know into our community.…
Don't miss . . .
Free webinar on May 22 with Peter, Margaret Wheatley and Steve Piersanti on stewardship and the redistribution of power for the sake of the next generation and the well-being of the whole.
Neighbours ~ Programs and Policies 2013, to celebrate John McKnight's life work and explore how neighbors can be effective agents of change in their communities, sponsored by Canada's Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement.
Tom Dewar's list of recommended reading and websites to follow up "Measuring and Evaluating Community Initiatives," his April 16 conversation with Peter on different ways of thinking about what local initiatives mean and how to support them.
Download or listen to John and Peter's conversation with Sarah van Gelder, co-funder and executive editor of YES! magazine, on what is working in the world and the localism and new journalism movements behind it.
