About us

in About Our Blocks, Resources

Building blocks for building communities

  • Our purpose is to provide a ready reference for people who want to work (and play) together to make a difference in their neighborhoods.
  • We focus on communicating information that people can use to improve their neighborhoods and their relationships with their neighbors.
  • We summarize the best material that’s already out there, and try to make them more accessible (shorter, mobile-readable) and richer (f.e. by using tags & links).
  • We collect stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things for their neighborhoods. (Some of us learn better through stories than through technical stuff)
  • Theory is good, but we like practice (lessons learned, case studies, best practices).
  • We try to distill the material so as to highlight ideas that have been tested, whether they worked or not.
  • With your help, we maintain a list of online libraries and resources that are available to the public, for free.

Please help improve this resource by posting your suggestions using the form below.

Blockheads

Our Blocks is an all-volunteer effort. Our current Co-Editors:

  • Allegra Williams is a community organizer and practitioner based in the greater Boston area, where she focuses on creating and expanding community networks to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods. She recently coordinated several public art and cultural initiatives, and co-founded a homeless coalition in Lowell, Massachusetts, which advocates for policy change, alongside social service agencies and homeless residents. She earned her Masters degree in Community Social Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she works as the Program Manager of the university’s Community and Cultural Affairs Office. She organized the 2010 Innovative Cities conference.
  • Brian Fier is involved in community building and development. He is interested in information dissemination, collaboration, and improving communities. Additionally, he is developing tools for connecting people to each other and to information with the intention of helping improve communities and people’s lives. One such project is Campus Dakota where he is the President and Community Developer. Brian has a master’s and bachelor’s degree from North Dakota State University; his coursework was focused on the social sciences.
  • Christina Holt got her MA in Child Development and Psychology, and her BA in Community Leadership Development, from the University of Kansas. She’s the Associate Director for Community Tool Box Services at the KU Workgroup for Community Health & Development. Christina was a Research Associate at the KU Work Group, then served at Community Living Opportunities from 2004 to 2007, as Senior Administrator, Behavior Analyst, and Director of Behavioral Services and Family Enhancement.
  • Dan Rapson worked as Director of Construction at the Wake County Chapter of Habitat for Humanity, then the third largest affiliate in the United States. He attends Wayne State University in downtown Detroit, and is interested in developing housing and food resources in the city.
  • Hien Tran graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in International Business. Her nonprofit work started in her early college years. She worked at Catholic Charities, Charities Housing, Girls For A Change, and the International Rescue Committee. When not at work, she bakes, gardens, reads, and promotes community development.
  • Jami Jones is a graduate of Portland State University with a BS degree in Science and Community Health.  She worked as a System Analyst and IT Business Analyst in the Telecommunications Industry before serving as Information Coordinator for the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.  She currently serves as Manager of Technical Support and Training at the University of Kansas Workgroup for Community Health & Development.
  • Joseph Porcelli (@JosephPorcelli) is the Chief Executive Neighbor at NeighborsForNeighbors.org a Boston based 501c3, which operates social networks that connect people who live, work, and serve in the same neighborhood, providing them with tools to communicate and collaborate. He founded The Mug Project (winner of the 2009 Green Residential Waste Reduction Champion Award), and The Nametag Project to promote neighborliness. Joseph also worked as a Program Coordinator for the Boston Police Department, where he helped develop and maintain crime watch groups.
  • Laura Toscano (@gardenvarieties) is an Operations Manager at KaBOOM!, a national non-profit dedicated to bringing play back into the lives of our children. She’s an advocate for unstructured play, exploration, community gardening, local farms, public art, and dreaming big. Laura has a BA in Philosophy from Yale University, and blogs about helping to save one of DC’s last truly local farms as The Garden Variety Philosopher.
  • Leo Romero (@LeoRomero) majored in History and Political Science at the University of the Philippines Baguio, and did post-grad work in Business Economics at the University of Asia and the Pacific. As an organizer, he’s worked with students, workers, tribal minorities, businesses, and NGOs. His day job is in affordable housing, as Regional Manager at The John Stewart Company, where he’s focused on working families, seniors, the formerly homeless, and people with AIDS, addictions, or developmental disabilities.
  • Neal Gorenflo (@gorenflo) is the publisher of Shareable.net. A former market researcher, stock analyst, and Fortune 500 strategist, Neal left the corporate world to help people share through Internet startups, public events, and a circle of friends committed to the common good. Through this circle, Neal met those who would co-found Shareable.net with him. In addition to his work at Shareable, Neal serves on the board of nonprofits Independent Arts & Media and ForestEthics, and is a Strategy Fellow at FAS.research and a member of Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab.
  • P H Yang (@TravelFoto) is a documentarian of social causes. He was born in Hong Kong, and started his career in photography at the age of eight. Since then, he has traveled to five continents, documenting his journey in photographs. He has documented the plight of migrants and of the homeless in the US, and of  underprivileged children and migrant workers in rural China. PH supports nonprofits by, among other things, making his photographs available for exhibition, with proceeds donated to these organizations. You can check out his photography here.

While many of us work in organizations that care about communities, we don’t represent them here. Please don’t blame them for anything we might do.

Thanks to Allen Gunn of Aspiration for helping us set up and maintain this resource. And thank you Ami Dar, Arthur Coddington, Britt Bravo, Gina Cardazone, Matt Garcia, and Paul Lamb for the inspiration, guidance, and support.

Be a Blockhead

This is a new project, and we need your help. The only criterion is that you’re able to write excerpts, summaries, or syntheses of good material that’s already out there, so people who want to do something about their neighborhoods can quickly pick up proven ideas to apply. If you want to be a Blockhead, please email us using the contact form below and tell us a bit about yourself, with links to sources we can use to write your bio (your blog, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile etc). Then register so we can give you edit rights. While waiting for us to get off our day jobs and respond to you (see why we need you?), you can read and improve upon our Style Guide.

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Please tell us a bit about yourself, and why you want to help. Thanks!

An open letter from Bill Berkowitz of Community Tool Box Re: “Taking Action in Your Neighborhood”

in About Our Blocks, Resources

I got this note from UMass Professor Emeritus Bill Berkowitz earlier this week, and with his permission have posted it here so you can share your own thoughts and suggestions. Dr. Berkowitz is a writer, editor, and core team member of the Community Tool Box, the most extensive web site on community health and development on the planet (which we featured here). His books deal with skills, ideas, personal qualities, and stories relating to community organization and improvement. Bill is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a recipient of its award for Distinguished Contributions to Practice in Community Psychology.

I’d forwarded this email to some of my contacts in the neighborhoods movement, and with their permission will be posting excerpts from their responses here as well.

Hi, Leo – Thanks very much for your April 12 note. It’s so easy to be impressed by it – both by your statement of purpose and by the people you’ve been gathering around your ideas. I surely hope your work gains momentum, takes off, and soars.

In this note, I’m sending along a concept of our own, titled “Taking Action in Your Neighborhood,” which perhaps you might reflect and comment upon.

In some ways, it’s a variation and extension of Our Blocks. Some differences are that it’s more explicitly action-oriented, and more explicitly participatory. It also structures the content by topic, rather than have the user do it via tagging. And it centralizes and gives a specific focus for much of the needed neighborhood work.

What’s here could be a rather big idea, probably calling for both synthesis of existing content and creation of some new content as well. The potential payoff, though, could be very large.

So take a look if you can, and see what you think; we’ll be very grateful to learn of your own reactions, others’ as well, whatever they may be.

We’re also very comfortable with your sharing any or all of this with your other neighborhood contacts – actually we’d encourage this, since more feedback may both help strengthen this concept, as well as Our Blocks itself, and potentially lead to mutually-beneficial collaborations.

Thanks very much again, Leo, and be talking to you.

~~ Bill

* * * * *

In response to your note and request for feedback, I’m writing to sketch out some neighborhood thoughts, and more specifically around developing a centralized “Taking Action in Your Neighborhood” resource that I’d mentioned before.

We’d certainly be interested in any of your own thoughts you might have on this, especially (if the idea has merit) for moving this idea forward. I’m also copying Jay here, since this relates pretty closely to some work he has done.

Here’s the rationale: There’s a lot of neighborhood-related stuff in print and in cyberspace, which may not be very surprising. Much of what exists is both good and useful. A lot of it can be found on Our Blocks. Some of it is on the Community Tool Box, and I’m sure also on many other sites as well.

But a real downside is that it’s scattered all over the map – so if someone is interested in a particular neighborhood topic or issue, they might find themselves looking in a lot of places, and having to patch together what they need from a bunch of different sources. This is both time-consuming and often not all that effective.

(more…)

Community Tool Box announces partnership with Our Blocks

in About Our Blocks, Resources

Very grateful to have Christina Holt and Jami Jones join the Blockheads. They do great work at the Community Tool Box, where I volunteer, and it’s inspiring to be able to work with them here as well. As more such stellar people and organizations join us in our efforts to bring you field-tested ideas and tools to make a difference in your neighborhoods, we hope to be able to serve you even weller (no that’s not a real word, I don’t think). Here’s CTB’s announcement:

Our Blocks

Collaboration is a key idea we at the Community Tool Box teach; Chapter 24, Section 3 to be exact.  We emphasize the importance of networking, coordination, cooperation and collaboration as possible relationships that can exist between organizations.

The Community Tool Box was recently introduced to Our Blocks, an online collaborative site connecting people who want to work together to make a difference in the places they live, work and play.

Purple Line

How does it work?

Their writers summarize materials online into concise, easy to read articles, filled with important tags, links and information.  They provide real-life examples of the work occurring in neighborhoods through their community stories.  Additionally, there is an extensive online library with lists of resources available for anyone interested in grassroots community building.

Capturing important topics, such as community engagement, grassroots organizing, and placemaking, the writers for Our Blocks summarize the work being done by coalitions, non-profits and individuals, highlighting their stories, the resources they provide to the greater global community and examples of real-life application of these concepts.

Their site serves primarily as a blog, with extensive links for their libraries, case examples and partners/featured collaborators, however they also use Twitter and other social media tools to network with the community at large.

Our Blocks is entirely supported by the efforts of volunteers. The co-editors are a collective group of individuals working in positions to support community health and development by advocating for improvement and change in their local communities.

Are you interested in learning more and even contributing to the efforts of Our Blocks?  Visit their site: http://ourblocks.net

We at the Community Tool Box are grateful for partnerships with organizations such as Our Blocks, as it brings to light our resources and allows us to share with the global community the tools we offer.  Our Blocks did an amazing write-up about us, which you can read here.