Excerpts from From the Ground Up: Community’s Role in Addressing Street Level Social Issues, by Jim Diers. This is the fourth report of the Core Challenge Initiative, a three-year public policy research and communications project, and a major component of the Western Cities Project of the CanadaWest Foundation. Building strong communities is not easy. Even [...]

Excerpts from Neighbor Power, by Jim Diers. I will conclude by summarizing what I have learned about community, community organizing, community initiatives, and the role of government. A neighborhood is not the same as a community. A neighborhood is a geographic area that people share, while at community is a group of people who identify [...]

Toward the end of 2009, the Craigslist Foundation began a series of discussions around their plans to focus the foundation’s efforts on strengthening communities, with some emphasis on neighborhood-based communities. This began with a meeting at The Case Foundation in Washington DC, which included Michael Smith, Kari Dunn, Cindy Gallop, Jessica Kirkwood, Marsha Semmel, Michael [...]

“Few people in this country know as much about community building as Jim Diers,” said  Fred Kent, President of Project for Public Spaces (PPS). From 1988 to 2002, Jim led Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods which is “widely known as the most innovative effort in the U.S. to empower local residents” (John P. Kretzmann, Co-director or [...]

I almost tripped over myself this morning as I listened (via the NPR app) to David Brooks talk about the communitarian tradition in the Republican party, during yesterday’s All Things Considered (see transcript). First of all, I didn’t even know that such a tradition exists in the GOP (that’s how smart I am). And second [...]

Some free icebreaking, team-building, community-making resources and selections, mainly from nonprofits, schools, and government agencies. Some notes on when to use icebreakers, and what makes them good – from the Resource Center of the Corporation for National & Community Service (@nationalservice). “Icebreakers are often used to encourage people to open up or feel comfortable, invite [...]

A national leader in the field of civic participation and community change, Everyday Democracy helps people of different backgrounds and views talk and work together to solve problems and create communities that work for everyone. Using innovative, participatory approaches, Everyday Democracy works with neighborhoods, cities and towns, regions, and states. It also runs the The [...]

IssueLab archives, distributes, and promotes the research produced by nonprofits. It archives hard-to-find research from small community-based organizations as well as large think tanks. Here are some research papers in its Community Development selection. Demonstrating Our Values, Impact and Effectiveness: Final Report of the NeighborWorks Community Organizing Pilot Program. Contributing Organization(s): Neighborworks America Intersection: Taking [...]

This is a list compiled by Professor Dick Schoech of the School of Social Work, University of Texas Arlington. He received these suggestions from members of COMM-ORG and ACOSA. Ten of these videos are available on YouTube, and I’ve organized them into this a playlist, which you can play (in the order listed) by clicking [...]

Excerpted from the Community Development section of CDX’s 74-page Resource Briefing, to include only those publications that are available online for free. The Community Development Exchange is a membership-led organization which aims to bring about social justice and equality by using and promoting the values and approaches of community development. More free publications from CDX [...]