Environment

When I visited Taiwan earlier this year, I was reminded that the Chinese word for crisis is comprised of two characters, one meaning danger and the other opportunity. In every crisis there is opportunity. Our world is confronted by...

Cormac Russell was raised on the west coast of Ireland, and now lives in Dublin, although he spends much of his time travelling.  He promotes the idea of Asset-Based Community Driven Efforts, and while some of his work is based...

How can we help people to live a good life? Instead of trying to right what's wrong within a community, Cormac argues we need to start with what's strong. We need to help people discover what gifts they have...

Kettering Foundation president and CEO David Mathews explains how people and communities can get greater control over their collective future. One way to do this is to ask questions that will reveal new possibilities for acting together on shared...

An animated archetypal flood story that imagines how politics was first created. It counters the idea that public deliberation is some kind of new technique to be used on communities and encourages a notion of democracy that is citizen-centered.   The...

Excerpts and illustrations from For Communities to Work, by David Mathews, © the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, posted by permission. To download the complete work click here. Having spent studying communities, the Kettering Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization, has...

January When we lose the ability to care for our neighbours, we also inadvertently chart a course towards a future wherein that carelessness becomes our inheritance. Neighbourliness is embodied in the practice of welcomiReflectionsng the stranger at the edge, and the...

Peter Block is the author of Community: The Structure of Belonging and one of the leading thinkers about community development. We were very excited when he became a member of New Scoop last winter and recently asked him why he joined...

Cormac Russell Note: The following is a guest blog written by Al Etmanski (aletmanski.com) . Al is a community organizer, social entrepreneur and author. John McKnight is his friend. Al's new book is Impact: Six Patterns to Spread Your Social Innovation. There is a...