‘Connect the Dots’ to showcase the best of Duluth neighborhoods

in community engagement

[Ideas: bring nonprofits to neighborhoods; honor local heroes]

Area residents are invited to Marshall School on Saturday morning to learn about the services offered by more than 35 community organizations. The “Connect the Dots” event is also being held to highlight the richness of five Duluth neighborhoods — East Hillside, Central Hillside, Lincoln Park, West Duluth and Morgan Park.

LISC and the At Home in Duluth Collaborative will honor five neighborhood heroes:

  • Archie Davis, an East Hillside resident involved with a community patrol, after-school programs at the Grant Community Recreation Center, the African American Men’s Group, CHUM, the Life-House drop-in center for youth, HIV 101 Peer Education, the Parent Teacher Association, the Duluth Amateur Youth Basketball Association and the East Hillside Community Club.
  • Scott Yeazle, a Central Hillside resident involved in the Human Rights Commission, Neighborhood Housing Services, the Affordable Housing Coalition, the Hillsider Newspaper, the Twin Ports Action Coalition, the Central Hillside Food SHARE program and the Central Hillside Community Club.
  • Chester “Chet” Johnson, a Morgan Park resident active in the Morgan Park community picnic, the annual Breakfast with Santa, the Morgan Park Garden Club, the NHS Flower Fest, the United Protestant Church gardens and the Morgan Park School Service Learning Program.
  • Mark Howard, a Lincoln Park resident, known for keeping his neighborhood clean, fighting crime and assisting those less fortunate.
  • Karin Swor, a West Duluth resident, involved in scouting, soccer, community clubs, alumni associations, the Combined Duluth Honor Guard, the West Duluth Business & Civic Club, the West Duluth Women’s Club, the West Duluth American Legion and the Mayor’s Commission on Disabilities.

Read the full story: ‘Connect the Dots’ to showcase the best of Duluth neighborhoods | Duluth News Tribune | Duluth, Minnesota.

Volunteers sift through hundreds of suggestions

in community engagement

The Mission Possible initiative to find solutions for struggling charities came into sharper focus Tuesday, when 25 volunteers gathered to winnow down the best among hundreds of solutions offered by supporters.

After nearly three hours of discussion, the most popular ideas included:

  • Finding easier ways to donate, such as transferring interest paid on checking accounts and rounding up purchases to the nearest dollar for charity.
  • Create a central clearinghouse of nonprofit needs and find partners to help meet them.
  • Establishing a panel of “angel investors” who would hear ideas from charities that need money.
  • Encouraging nonprofits to consolidate administrative functions to save donor dollars.

Also popular was exploring a way to implement Charlotte’s own version of a Chinese program that allows the young to “bank” volunteer hours spent in service of the elderly. Those hours are then reciprocated in later years by the next generation as a sort of “no-cost Social Security.”

More than 350 ideas were submitted through a database created for Mission Possible, a coalition made up of the Observer and eight media partners that sought to alert the public to critical nonprofit needs.

“As all of you know, many of the traditional approaches to charitable causes just aren’t working any more,” Observer Editor Rick Thames told the panelists. “We thought it important to bring new faces to the table, and these 350 ideas represent those new faces.”

The hundreds of ideas could be grouped into a handful of categories, including administrative solutions; donation drives and events; national initiatives brought to Charlotte; online initiatives; and volunteer drives.

Mission Possible was launched with a belief that the public could make a difference, at a time when the recession and the banking crisis had cut into donations and grants to local charities.

Read the full article: Volunteers sift through hundreds of suggestions – CharlotteObserver.com. By Mark Price