Category Archives: collaborative action

New CommunityMatters Conference Call Series Starts Thursday

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We are excited to share that our partners at CommunityMatters, in collaboration with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, are launching a new conference call series on moving community projects from planning through completion called “Making it Happen”. Their first call, “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper”, will take place this Thursday, December 12th from 4-5pm Eastern Time. We highly encourage you to register now! You can read more about the call below, find the original post on the CM blog, or find more info on the series here.  

Start with Petunias: A Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper Approach to Community Action

CM_logo-200pxRaise your hand if this sounds familiar:

You’ve just finished a great community design or planning process. Hundreds of people participated, you came up with dozens of brilliant ideas for fixing your Main Street or revitalizing a run-down park, you drew up spiffy designs, and everyone is jazzed.

There’s just one problem: you don’t have the money to do much of anything. And your volunteers are tired. Oh, and you don’t even really know what to do first. (Make that three problems.)

We get it. You’re not alone. So where do you start? With the petunias.

Welcome to the school of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper community action (“LQC”). When you’re just starting to implement designs and projects you need to build momentum, earn some quick wins, and make the most of every single dollar and volunteer hour. That means picking some ridiculously easy, cheap, and non-controversial projects that you can get done immediately and that will help build support for something bigger.

“Many great plans get bogged down because they are too big, too expensive, and simply take too long to happen,” writes the Project for Public Spaces (PPS). “Meanwhile the high cost of missed opportunities for economic development – and public life – continue to add up.”

Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper thinking and action can change all of that.

Here’s how it works: Forget trying to raise five-, six-, or seven-figure sums to implement all of your streetscape improvements right away. Instead, go spend $15 at a garden center, grab a helper, and transform one weedy corner with some new planter boxes. Once people see what a difference that can make, it won’t be hard to get $100 bucks and enough volunteers to create a sidewalk café for a day, showcasing the potential of the space. And when people see how cool that is, it won’t be long until you have $1,000 and to buy some tables and chairs and create a pop-up pedestrian plaza. And if that works? Then you think about shelling out more money and making it permanent.

Fun, right? But more than just fun, LQC is actually cutting-edge strategy. By choosing the right actions first, and testing things in an experimental and incremental way, you can have a surprisingly large impact while saving resources and building support for longer-term actions. LQC lets you hone in on the actions that will actually work the best for a place and the people who use it. And it lets you actually make places livelier, prettier and more functional fast – long before you could accomplish traditional big-budget projects.

On the December CommunityMatters conference call, in partnership with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, you’ll learn about the LQC model and how to apply it in your town.

PPS recommends a three-phase process:

  1. Start with amenities (like seating or gardens) and public art, which can quickly transform a space and encourage people to return.
  2. Then add events and “interventions” (such as temporary bike lanes or street closures) that can help test design solutions before fully implementing them.
  3. Finally, use “light development” (adaptive reuse, temporary structures, and building facelifts) to make changes quickly and relatively inexpensively.

But, there are somewhat messier stories from real communities that have moved from ideas to action.

Take Elkhorn City, Kentucky. Tim Belcher, a local attorney and President of the Elkhorn City Area Heritage Trust, has helped bring two Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design workshops to this town of just over 1,000 people. Elkhorn City wanted to find ways to increase tourism and economic development, and they focused on two of their biggest assets: whitewater paddling (they are located on the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River) and theater (they are home to the renowned Artists Collaborative Theater). The community honed in on key action steps, experimented with small programs and events to build momentum, and leveraged that early work to attract more funding and complete more projects than many cities 50 times their size.

Still not sure how your community’s long-term plans can be transformed into a quick-and-dirty to-do list? Hundreds of other communities have paved the way, and their ideas are there for the taking. Start with “Spontaneous Interventions”, an exhibit at the recent Venice Biennale. Brendan Crain, Communications Manager at the Project for Public Spaces, was a member of the curatorial team for that project and will join us on the line to share LQC lessons and ideas from around the world. You can also get great ideas and advice from the Tactical Urbanism guides (Volumes 1 and 2).

So go ahead. Put that plan back on the shelf (for the time being) and just go buy some petunias. Read up on Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper community action at the Project for Public Spaces. Join us on December 12 to learn how to make your community stronger in a flash.

Think you have this LQC approach in the bag? This call is for you budding experts, too!  Tell us about your Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper success when you register for the call. We’ll ask a few people to share their story on the line!

This call is the first in a three-part series co-hosted by CommunityMatters and the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD). The series is designed to help any community move from a design or planning process into taking action.  

Fun & Games with CommunityMatters

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Our friends and partners at CommunityMatters have been having a lot of fun recently, and we wanted to share a bit about it so that NCDD members aren’t missing out! CM recently hosted a conference call on Creating Fun Places, and you can find the notes for the call here and/or listen to the audio of the call here. We also encourage you to check out their follow-up blog post about lessons from the call below or find the original on the CM blog by clicking here.

5 Tips for Creating Playful Places in Your Town

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Mike Lanza of Playborhood and Brian Corrigan of Oh Heck Yeah take play pretty seriously. Mike turned his front yard into a neighborhood gathering place focused on play, and Brian’s organizing a large-scale street arcade in downtown Denver. Mike and Brian both love having fun, but they also know that play is beneficial for their communities.

Mike’s house is an epicenter for play, attracting kids and adults alike with fun fountains, sandboxes and even an in-ground trampoline. He’ll tell you that after creating this neighborhood gathering spot, people on his block are more physically active, more social and they have more fun. These benefits are characteristic of third places – spaces outside of work or home where people gather.

For Brian, Oh Heck Yeah’s focus on turning downtown Denver into an immersive street arcade is about building trust among strangers, generating new ideas and inspiring partnerships that can make the city an even better place to live, work and (of course) play.

On our last CommunityMatters conference call, Mike and Brian shared their ideas for creating more playful places. If you want to reap the benefits of play in your own community, here are five tips for getting started:

1. Think Like an Inventor

Have a vision for transforming a dull space in your community into a vibrant and playful place? Go ahead, dream big! But, when it comes to making things happen, think like an inventor and start with a prototype. The iterative approach of prototyping means you can experiment with an idea to refine the concept and work out the kinks.

Take Brian’s advice and start with the 1.0 version of an idea.  What does your grand idea look like when it is stripped down to its simplest, easiest and least expensive form? As you grow toward the 10.0 version, you’ll gain momentum by building a cadre of supporters, ensuring your biggest version of your big idea is successful.

If you’re interested in learning more about prototyping, don’t miss our December call on A Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper Approach to Community Action. Register now! 

2. Legalize Fun

It’s easy to talk about creating great places, but altering public spaces around town means taking risks. If your local laws hinder improvised solutions to traffic problems, start advocating for a local city repair ordinance.

Inspired by the success of Share it Square, a neighborhood project to make a traffic intersections more interesting, safe and playful, the City of Portland created an ordinance allowing for locally-led improvement projects. As long as adjacent property owners approve and safety is maintained, citizens can receive permits for intersection improvements. Use Portland’s ordinance as the foundation for legalizing fun in your town.

3. Create a Draw

Build places where people want to stay.

Public spaces rely on one essential element for success – the presence of people. If you want people to engage in a playful space, make it visible. Mike suggests starting with a bench – just a place to sit. Add a solar-powered tea or coffee stand as an attractor. Or, take a playful approach by installing a ball pit or swing set. Invite people to come to the space at a particular time, and give them a reason to be there.

Find more ideas for attracting people by listening to our call on Third Places.

4. Engage Creative Minds

Capitalize on the ideas and talents of the creative sector, the artists, designers and actors in town. How can you enliven a public space with musicians or dancers?

Through Oh Heck Yeah, Brian is partnering with organizations like the Colorado Symphony and the Denver Art Museum to bring his project to life. In Mike’s front yard, a local artist created a mural of the neighborhood to help kids explore and understand their environment.

There are endless ways to engage creative minds in placemaking projects, especially when you’re focused on play. But, if you want something that resonates with your community, seek art that is culturally meaningful, that incorporates the skills of local people and showcases the distinct assets of your city or town.

5. Try Something!

Get outside and try something. If you’re starved for ideas, start with our list of 75 Seriously Fun Ways to Make Your Town More Playful. Or, check out our follow up: 25 (More) Ways to Make Your Town More Playful. And, don’t miss the playful ideas from Mike, Brian and our fabulous callers. You can find their thoughts by reading our call notes or listening to the call recording here.

You can find the original blog post from CommunityMatters at www.communitymatters.org/blog/five-tips-creating-playful-places-your-town.

Adding Art to Public Meetings

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We hope you’ll take a moment to read this inspiring article about the power of art in public meetings - and in this case, the art of words – from our friends at AmericaSpeaks. You can read it below or find the original post on their blog by clicking here.

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The Power of Spoken Word

We have facilitated hundreds of public meetings over the past 18 years. All are memorable in their own right, but some have special moments that are unforgettable.

At our Creating Community Solutions DC meeting on Saturday, October 12th, we facilitated a day-long meeting for 400 participants on mental health in the District. We had a fantastic turnout, literally standing room only, and particularly of youth aged 15-24, with more than 120 participating.

In every meeting, we try to feature local talent of one type or another – whether it be a band that plays prior to the beginning of a meeting or an exercise leader who leads an energetic stretch break for participants 4 or 5 hours into the meeting.

At Creating Community Solutions, we had the honor of including two very talented, precocious teenage spoken word artists, both from the DC Youth Slam Team.

Both artists – Amina Iro and Thomas “Vocab” Hill – have been performing for the past year, and have competed in national contests like the 2013 Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival.

Amina performed first, a powerful poem about the depression her mother has battled and the impact it has on her mom, herself, and her family. The crowd gave her an extended standing ovation.

Later in the morning Vocab performed a moving piece about his uncle, a veteran, who suffers PTSD after several tours in Iraq. He too brought down the house.

Whereas the rest of the day focused on conveying critical data and information about mental health and illness and featured in-depth and sometimes difficult conversations about what challenges youth face and how do we overcome these challenges, these artistic moments served to inspire, energize, and focus the audience on the critical nature of the convening.

Art can make an enormous difference in so many parts of our lives. And, even in unlikely settings like a public meeting on a public policy concern.

Thank you Amina and Thomas!

To read more about Creating Community Solutions DC, CLICK HERE.

First Youth Participatory Budgeting Process in the US

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The Participatory Budgeting Project, an NCDD organizational member, recently shared a press release announcing an exciting new initiative they are part of in Boston. You can read the statement below, or find the original post on the PBP blog by clicking here. It also mentions that PBP is seeking a youth organizer for this project, so if you know people who can be positive allies to the young people of this initiative, please share the job announcement with them. 

For me, it is crucial for our society that youth have chances to engage in real, consequential democratic processes early and often. Like Takoma Park, MD’s recent decision to decrease the voting age to 16, this initiative represents a step toward more meaningful youth engagement in our government. I’m encouraged.

Boston’s Youth to Decide How to Allocate $1 Million of City’s FY14 Budget

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City Announces Partnership with The Participatory Budgeting Project, Search for Youth Organizer Underway

Mayor Thomas M. Menino today announced the City of Boston is partnering with non-profit organization The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) on the pilot year of the City’s youth participatory budgeting process. For the first time, the City of Boston has set aside $1 million for youth to allocate through a year-long budgeting process. Through participatory budgeting, young Bostonians will identify projects to improve their communities, vet those projects, consider trade-offs, and vote on how to spend the $1 million. The process will be a collaboration between PBP, the Mayor’s Youth Council and Boston Centers for Youth and Families.

“Our most important collection of talent lies in our young people,” Mayor Menino said. “It is so important to have our young people engaged in government, and to make sure their voices are heard when it comes to improving their neighborhoods. This process puts the power in their hands, and will show them what kind of impact they can make on our city.”

A search is underway for a youth organizer who will be responsible for engaging young Bostonians in the process and working closely with both PBP and City of Boston staff. Those interested in learning more about the Youth Organizer position should visit: www.idealist.org/view/job/DgD2ZBfCFz5P/.

Young residents, community-based organizations and youth advocates will come together in a Steering Committee to begin to discuss the design and execution of the process. The Mayor’s Youth Council has invited high school teens and youth advocates from across the city to an info session on December 10 at 5:45 p.m. in City Hall. Those who would like to RSVP for the session should email: YouthCouncil@boston.gov.

“Participatory budgeting is a real school of democracy. Young people across Boston will learn democracy by doing – and decide how to spend $1 million on concrete improvements to their communities. I’m excited to work with the City and other community partners to build this groundbreaking new model for youth engagement and empowerment,” said Josh Lerner, Executive Director of The Participatory Budgeting Project.

There is already a buzz in Boston about the “1 Million Dollar Question.” Mayor’s Youth Council representatives and allies from neighborhoods across the city have begun asking their peers how $1 million could be spent to make Boston an even better city for youth. “We are going to get a chance to identify items that are important to us, to have our voices heard, and to see projects that will benefit the city for a long time to come,” said Kayla Knight, a Roxbury Representative on the Mayor’s Youth Council.

In April, Mayor Menino presented his $2.6 billion Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2014 and five year $1.8 billion Capital Plan, including $196 million in new FY 2014 project authorizations. The FY 2014 budget includes initiatives that keep Boston at the forefront of reinvention: changes at Boston Public Schools to increase access to quality, new housing to meet the needs of young professionals and middle-class families, and online learning for Boston’s neighborhoods. At the core of the budget is a desire to continue to build neighborhoods, provide residents an unparalleled quality of life, and support neighbors as they help one another.

Participatory budgeting originated in Brazil in 1989 and has been successful in U.S. cities including New York, Vallejo (CA), and Chicago. There are now more than 1,500 participatory budgets around the world, most at the city level. Participatory budgeting has also been used for counties, states, housing authorities, schools and school systems, universities, coalitions, and other public agencies. For more information on participatory budgeting, visit: www.participatorybudgeting.org.

More Responses to the launch of PB Boston:

“Participatory budgeting is a real school of democracy. Young people across Boston will learn democracy by doing – and decide how to spend $1 million on concrete improvements to their communities. I’m excited to work with the City and other community partners to build this groundbreaking new model for youth engagement and empowerment,” said Josh Lerner, Executive Director of the non-profit organization The Participatory Budgeting Project, which the City of Boston has contracted to help set up the youth PB process.

“I am thrilled that the City of Boston has embraced a “PB” process for its youth. What better way to teach young people the value and importance of civic engagement than to give them real power over real money. Kudos to Boston for making PB a part of its budgetary process and putting its young people front and center in its implementation.” — Chicago Alderman Joe Moore, who launched the first participatory budgeting process in the US in 2009.

“It is great to have the City of Boston joining the Participatory Budgeting family. At its best, government is what we do together to strengthen our communities. We have seen young people in New York take this charge and embrace their citizenship through Participatory Budgeting.” —  New York City Council Member Brad Lander, who worked with colleagues in Council to launch PB in NYC in 2011.

“Bringing participatory budgeting to Boston is in line with our city’s progressive history as hub for democratic innovation. It’s a new form of civic engagement that Mayor Menino has rightfully placed in the hands of our city’s young people to pilot. We look forward to working with Mayor-Elect Walsh to incorporate this effort into his broader vision for a more inclusive and engaged city.” — Aaron Tanaka, director of the Center for Economic Democracy and former executive director of the Boston Workers Alliance

“As governments everywhere devise new innovations to re-engage citizens, Boston’s Youth Participatory Budgeting initiative is an exciting innovation in participation and civic education that focuses on a set of people usually left out politics and government: young people. It will be exciting to see the proposals and projects that they develop over the coming year.” — Archon Fung, Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Birmingham Joins Mental Health Conversation with NIFI

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In addition today’s exciting news about the Text, Talk, Act project, we are pleased to share more good news about the Creating Community Solutions effort. This post comes from our partners at the National Issues Forums Institute, sharing the recent announcement that they will be helping the city of Birmingham, AL engage its public in mental health issues. Read more below, or find the original post here. 

NIF-logoOn November 1, 2013, Birmingham City Mayor William Bell hosted a press conference where he announced the launch of a public forum series on the topic of mental health and mental illness. Others who spoke at the press conference included Bill Muse, president of the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI); Stephanie McCladdie, regional administrator for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA); and other Birmingham area mental health officials.

The following is excerpted from Alabama’s 13 WVTM-TV website posting about the press conference:

“Birmingham is one of ten cities around the country to answer President Obama’s call for a national conversation about mental health with a broad based dialogue to discuss how mental health issues affect our communities and to discuss topics related to the mental health of our young people,” according to a news release from the city. “These discussions will lead to action plans designed to improve mental health programs and services for our families, schools and communities. The discussions, entitled Mental Health: What Are The Options?, will take place in the form of ten forums in Birmingham. Data collected from the forums will be provided to SAMSHA and aid in the further formation of programming in the Birmingham area.”

This Birmingham, Alabama citywide forums project is part of a large, nationwide conversation project about mental health and mental illness called Creating Community Solutions that was launched with a White House press conference in June, 2013.

More information about the nationwide project, how to join in the national conversation, and free resources and materials to use in local communities for conversations about mental health and mental illness, can be found at the project website at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org.

The original NIFI post plus other links can be found here: www.nifi.org/news/news_detail.aspx?itemID=25207&catID=23664.

Pledge to Help Foster Respectful Dialogue

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LRC-logoAs an organization, NCDD is not in the habit of supporting online petitions. But when Joan Blades, a supporting NCDD member and a co-founder of Living Room Conversations and MoveOn.org, reached out to us to support a petition she recently created, we immediately recognized its value for our work and knew that it was something our members could support.

That’s why we are encouraging NCDD members to join us in signing and sharing Joan’s petition, which is a commitment to make a simple pledge. It states:

I pledge to help our leaders and our communities to engage in respectful dialogue and to look for ways to solve problems cooperatively. Doing this, we can create better answers to all the challenges we face.

As people committed to the work of engaging every day people in their communities and in a broader democracy through dialogue and deliberation, many of us in NCDD have probably already made such a commitment, at least to ourselves. But by making it publicly and encouraging others to do the same, we might be able to bring even more people into our work who will make or renew that commitment to keep improving the ways we solve our problems as a society.

Joan and her colleagues have framed this effort as an effort to tackle the deep polarization present in our nation and especially among our political leaders. As dialogue and engagement practitioners, it is clear to us that the political dysfunction we have seen in recent months and years stems from this polarization and a lack of willingness or ability to engage with “the other side” in our politics. But we also know that the solution involves moving toward greater collaboration and real relationship building.

So we are proud to join Joan, Living Room Conversations, and MoveOn.org in renewing our commitment to help our leaders and our communities engage in respectful dialogue and cooperation. We hope you will join us, too.

You can find and share the pledge by visiting http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/healing-the-heart-of.

Here’s hoping this is a spark that starts something bigger.

Helping Community Voices Be Heard

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We all would like to see communities having more say in their governments, but as many of us know, making our communities heard is not always easy.  That’s why we were touched by a story recently shared by our friends at Everyday Democracy about a New Mexico group that, despite challenges, persevered in not only making the voices of their community heard, but also in making those voices into local policy.

You can read the story below or find the original post on ED’s blog.  We also encourage you to watch the inspiring video about Families United for Change and their efforts by clicking here.

Creating school policy for the community, by the community

EvDem LogoCandelaria Patterson joined Families United for Education after seeing her son unfairly pushed out of high school.

“I knew that what happened to him was not right, and I wanted to make sure that other students didn’t have to go through the same situation,” she says.

Educators, community members, and parents like Patterson are now part of Families United for Education, a group working to improve the experience of students in Albuquerque schools. The organization quickly is becoming a symbol of unity and perseverance in Albuquerque.

In organizing parents and community members to advocate for its children, Families for United Education developed a new family engagement policy and pushed it through the Albuquerque Public Schools system to adoption.

The policy is centered on eliminating the often-adversarial relationship between schools and communities by replacing it with a more open process that engages parents and communities as key and valued resources.

The policy was in the works for more than two years and officially adopted last August. Implementation is scheduled this year.

It addresses community and parent demands for ending racism, discrimination and the alienation of people of color and marginalized sectors of student population.

Other goals include closing the academic gap that exists between European-American students and other students, as well as increasing parent participation within the school system.

Families for United Education also is advocating for training the school system staff in “understanding the root causes of inequalities,” as well as requiring the school system to “utilize the histories and cultures of our families as a foundation for education.”

The road these community members have taken to replace the older, ineffective policy was anything but easy.

Tony Watkins, an Albuquerque Public Schools coordinator and key organizer with Families for United Education, praised Everyday Democracy, a national organization based in Connecticut that provides resources for community engagement, for supporting the organization’s work.

“Everyday Democracy helped us to start our sessions of dialogues, which gave us a process for bringing together several communities and building relationships and generating data,” says Watkins.

Families for United Education then analyzed and organized the data and used it as a basis to develop the comprehensive engagement policy eventually adopted by Albuquerque Public Schools.

The policy and advocacy-styled strategies allowed Families for United Education to build bridges and eradicate barriers using methods rarely employed by local communities to address their discontent with the school system.

“There is something unique about (the leaders of) Families United for Education,” says Lorenzo Garcia, Albuquerque Public Schools board member and chair of its District Relations Committee. “They are articulate, they know how to use data, they are disciplined, and they can congratulate administrators when they do a good job.”

With its success in Albuquerque, Families for United Education is becoming a valued and requested ally in the quest to make public education in New Mexico more open and equitable.

Recently the organization contributed to two pieces of legislation introduced by Democratic state Sen. Linda M. Lopez. Senate Bill 579 would“require state agencies to review their policies and practices to ensure that they do not contribute to institutionalized racism.” Lopez also introduced a memorial (a form of legislation in New Mexico) calling for a “Student Bill of Rights,” initiated by two young people from the Southwest Organizing Project, an organization that supports Families United for Education.

Families United also played a supportive role in a memorial introduced by Democratic state Rep. Antonio (Moe) Maestas calling for a diverse school curriculum in New Mexico. The bill includes support for books that support Native American and Latino culture, such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 years by Bill Bigelow. These books were among several banned last year by school officials in Tucson, Ariz., when state lawmakers passed a law that removed Mexican-American Studies from its public schools.

Earlier this year, Families United also organized an Albuquerque Public Schools candidates’ forum and created report cards for each candidate based on key educational issues.

“I see this fight as being on a boat where everybody has to row to reach our destiny,” says Hanh Nguyen, a community member who has been involved with the group since its early stages. “Along the way, people will leave the boat, and others will get on and take their places. But as long as you are in the boat, you have to keep rowing,” he added.

Join an Online Conversation on Resilience for New Economy Week

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This post was submitted by NCDD member Hina Pendle of New Economy Coalition via our Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have field news you want to share with the rest of us? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

neweconweekNCDD members are invited to join the New Economy Coalition’s Hina Pendle and Ben Roberts for an online conversation tomorrow, October 15th from 9-10:30am Pacific/12-1:30pm Eastern time. The conversation is part of the New Economy Week, and the theme will be “Growing Resilient Organizations, Leaders, and Culture.” Make sure to register ASAP by clicking here.

Join an online conversation and connect with other New Economy Week participants from across the nation around the theme of resilience.

“Build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller

Those of us growing a new, co-prosperous economy amidst the old, crumbling, unsustainable system know that it’s not only what we do that matters, but also how we do it. How can we build long-term resilience? How do we turn setbacks into powerful opportunities? How do we prevent suffering unintended consequences? How do we maintain organizational energy when it often seems like the deck is stacked against us, there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it?

Join us to consider these questions and the key dimensions of a resilient enterprise and a resilient culture.

A resilient enterprise…

  • Rides the rapids of change brilliantly
  • Grows from the inside out
  • Anticipates and prepares for the unknown
  • Retains essential functions during disturbance
  • Sees people as the organization’s most valuable asset
  • Has agile systems, infrastructure and flexible architecture

In a resilient culture, people are…

  • Happy, healthy and achieving their potential
  • Co-operative, co-laborative, co-ordinated, co-intelligent, considerate
  • Inspired by the vision and a mission that unifies the enterprise
  • Fully participating in the functioning organization
  • Have relationships that work

IMPORTANT: Vist the following URL to register for the call: http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/P8U32VBQXOZWUG19

This conversation on resilience is just one piece of the New Economy Week. New Economy Week is

…an opportunity to shine a light on the thousands upon thousands of things that everyday people are doing right now to build a new kind of economy. These innovators are all around us engaged in the work of growing co-operative and independent enterprises, democratizing and stabilizing finance through credit unions, finding new ways to share skills and goods, new ways to measure success, and new ways to meet growing human needs on an all too finite planet.

From October 12-18, we will be highlighting events, actions, reports, works of art, and other projects across the United States and Canada. By calling attention to the thousands of things people are doing right now to build a new kind of economy, we hope to inspire more participation in this movement and catalyze a conversation on the need for deep, systemic change.

You can learn more by visiting www.neweconomyweek.org.

Winners of the Successful Communities Contest

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CM_logo-200pxNCDD would like to join our partners with CommunityMatters in congratulating the winners of the Successful Communities contest!  The contest encouraged local groups to create projects to improve their communities, and awarded $500 to four winning communities, and the winners were recently declared:

Last month, CommunityMatters asked people to come together, listen to our August call on the Secrets to Successful Communities with Ed McMahon, then decide on one completely achievable action for making their community more successful. To sweeten the deal, the Orton Family Foundation offered $500 to four communities that came up with an idea or strategy for success. Sixteen of the 17 parties came up with a next step for taking action.

Public voting helped us select the following four entries to win $500. Congratulations to Discover Downtown Middlesboro, Upstream Arts Collective, the Medfield Cultural District, and Old Time Ozark Traditions! We’ll keep an eye on these projects over the coming months and share their progress with yo

We encourage you to learn out more about the winning projects here on the Community Matters blog, and check out the Successful Communities Gallery by clicking here. Congratulations again to the winning communities: Middlesboro, KY, Silverton, OR, Medfield, MA, and Mountain View, AR! Here’s hoping your projects continue to grow and improve you communities!