NCDD is partnering once again with numerous organizations in our field to encourage a national conversation – this time around the importance of weaving community during times of crisis. We hope you can take part!
The National Conversation Project is a coalition of partner organizations inviting Americans into online conversations and mutual support to weave a stronger community even now–especially now. Together, we’re promoting conversations and community amidst fear and isolation. We seek to serve our neighbors and nation in a moment of acute social crisis.
This pandemic can drive us apart or it can drive us together. Americans often rise to common challenges like this with kindness, love, mutual support, and shared responsibility to endure together. We need community now more than ever. Although our nation’s social fabric is badly frayed by distance and division, together we can weave a strong social fabric and emerge healthy and united.
Though we may avoid gathering in person, we can support each other in many ways online, via phone, and through acts of kindness for neighbors. By #WeavingCommunity now, we will be a stronger, more genuinely connected society on the other side of the pandemic.
We invite you to…
- Check out the Weaving2020 website now.
- Use the hashtag #WeavingCommunity whenever you invite people to your own online conversations or talk about your work.
- Host a video or phone conversation, spark a social media or text conversation, or do an act of kindness for a neighbor.
- Become a partner by contacting pearce@weaving2020.org.
Check back at www.weaving2020.com, where we’ll soon be adding lots of resources for online dialogue, dialogues you and others can participate in, and more.
In 2019, The Harwood Institute interviewed 36 leaders to learn how local elected officials view and feel about their interactions with community members. We heard about the tenuous rapport between local officials and the people they serve and, more specifically, the state of outreach and engagement between them.
Gain the Skills You Need Personally and Professionally
The Winter 2020 issue of the National Civic Review is dedicated to journalist and author Neal R. Peirce, an indefatigable advocate for democratic governance, regionalism, civic engagement, and positive community change. A frequent contributor to this journal during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Neal served on the Board of Directors of the National Civic League from 1986 to 1995. He passed away on December 27, 2019.
Net Impact
Purple is a non-partisan coalition, campaign and movement to rediscover and recommit to democratic values and institutions. It begins this November with a media and education campaign that will “illuminate and dramatize the many glories of American democracy.” Participants in this campaign will include media outlets, schools, libraries, and other organizations committed to sharing the message of the importance of democracy and our participation in it. Their vision is to gain visibility and build a movement for civic participation and democracy across differences, which then leads to increased action, including volunteering, voting, serving, and participating in civic life. As Bob shared on the call, “friends don’t let friends check out of the [democratic] process”.
Last week, the nonpartisan research and public engagement organization Public Agenda 
The guests are Sheila Bentley and Jean Francios Mathieu, members of the International Listening Association (