Michelle Strutzenberger

For fifteen years, Michelle Strutzenberger worked as a Generative Journalist and Newsroom Chair with Axiom News. While working full time, Michelle began writing children’s novels. Her latest book, The Secret Talent Shop of Pineapple River, is about the adventure of discovering and lifting up neighbourhood gifts. The book is very much inspired by the spirit and intention of asset-based community development, the work of Peter Block and John McKnight of Abundant Community in creating abundant communities and the worldview and practice of Appreciative Inquiry. Michelle lives in Peterborough, Ontario with her husband and three children. You can connect with Michelle on Twitter @michelle_strutz and Facebook via NewShemayim
8 POSTS

What is Possible in Re-humanizing the West?

Tucked away in a corner of the Internet is a reading room which people who are seeking ideas that invert their thinking will want to visit. Restore Commons, an initiative of Peter Block and friends, has been quietly collecting the...

Is Now the Time to Bring Alive Centuries-old Jubilee Concept?

A group of leaders of diverse faith affiliations in Cincinnati has been gripped by a sense that the ongoing economic struggle of those on the margins has brought their city to an historic crossroads. Believing that genuine hope for the...

Timebanking Rich in Possibilities

Sometimes the significance of a happening revisits you much later. When, several years ago, I found myself in a carload of folks that included pioneer of timebanking, Edgar Cahn, I felt very honoured but certainly didn’t imagine what might...

What if Marginalized Neighbourhoods Crafted Their Own Handmade, Place-based Economies?

From entrepreneurs in their 20s to established real estate developers, the diversity of people who joined the first few gatherings on neighbourhood economics in Cincinnati had an initiator of the effort, Peter Block, happily stunned. The most excited people in some...

What’s Possible When Two Women Step Up to Connect Their Neighbourhood?

Amber Cannon feels most energized when she looks back over the last few months that she’s been active in her community and realizes the mental health issues she’s struggled with in the past have lessened considerably. “Since I’ve been involved...

Downtown Vancouver to Get “Knee to Knee”

Alisdair Smith’s experience at an event co-led by thought leaders Peter Block and John McKnight in Cincinnati last year hit him at the cellular level, he says. The Vancouver resident is now planning a similar gathering for two downtown neighbourhoods in his...

Growing Global Divisiveness Gets Disrupted

Ian Edwards is nervous about the world he’s leaving his 14-year-old son, particularly the divisiveness he sees happening at an increasingly disturbing rate with all kinds of people. “It seems much greater than when I was younger,” the Boulder, Colorado...

Memphis Sets the Table for Its Gifts

Typically, institutions committed to a community’s well-being begin by asking what’s wrong with a place. But the three thought leaders to join an upcoming Memphis conversation — John McKnight, Peter Block and Walter Brueggemann — choose not to take the...