Your turn to share resources for building community in neighborhoods

in community engagement, Free Libraries Online

Intermission in our Best practices in Community Empowerment series.

We’re gobsmacked by how much we’d already learned through this three-week experiment:

  1. There’s A BUNCH (technical term) of great stuff out there that we didn’t even know existed. And to think we thought we’d been paying attention.
  2. When you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s good to seek help from people who do.
  3. Good people who know stuff will share stuff they know.
  4. When people we trust give us advice, we pay attention.

So we’ve decided to take this experiment a little bit further. We’ve asked our friends to ask their friends. And we’re asking you, dear reader (Hi Mom!):

If someone came up to you and said: “I’d like to throw a block party (or launch a local website, or build a community garden, or start a social enterprise, or improve safety, or make an asset map, or whatever) what are the best 3 to 5 resources I should check out?”

What would you say?

To make it easier for you to make recommendations (and for us to publish them), we’ve developed this simple form (see the image below; you can either read it sideways, or click on it to go to the survey).

Thanks!

Next up: Kevin Harris of Neighbourhoods

Wrap-up: Coverage of Pew Research Center’s “Neighbors Online”

in community engagement, Free Libraries Online

Pew’s Neighbors Online report, published Wednesday, provides baseline data on neighborhood communications. Join the Q&A with author Aaron Smith, over at e-democracy.org’s Locals Online. Several media outlets reported on the report, and here are a few that did more than reprint the overview:

  • Chicago Sun-Times: Folks use digital tools to take role in community – “Leonard’s experience mirrors the findings of a study released Wednesday. Contrary to assumptions that people who go online hole up in their basements, the study showed the opposite: Internet users are more likely than non-users to talk face to face with their neighbors about local and community issues.”
  • CivSource: More going online to go local – “Steven Clift, director of E-Democracy.org – a nonprofit organization that works to develop civic engagement and online community building strategies – called the report an “excellent start,” in an interview yesterday. The report puts numbers to what we’ve instinctively thought about neighborhood activity online and I think it will certainly move the field of discussion along.”
  • Christian Science Monitor: The Internet probably won’t turn you into a hermit, study finds – “Far from being more reclusive, Internet users are more likely to meet their neighbors face-to-face and engage in community issues, a new study reveals. The findings suggests that talking in person or over the telephone remain the top two ways that people living close to one another keep up on community developments, even in an increasingly digital world.”
  • e-democracy: Neighbors Online – What have 27% of Internet Users Discovered? Women Lead the Way. Need More Inclusion – “So now we have numbers on the digital participation divide we must close: Only 2% of those with household incomes under $30,000 are on a neighborhood e-mail list; only 3% of Hispanics; only 2% of rural residents.”
  • New York Times: Friends, Neighbors and Facebook – “There’s no need to pine for a return to the pre-Facebook, cardigan-swaddled idealism of Mister Rogers and his charming “neighbors” and “friends,” but it is important for us to remember that tangible, meaningful engagement with those around us builds better selves and stronger communities.”
  • ReadWriteWeb: Neighbors Rely On Word of Mouth, But Online Gains – “The biggest effect that online tools have had on neighborhood interactions is in providing an avenue for learning about and interacting on local issues to individuals who might not engage in these issues through more traditional means.”

Although all of Pew’s survey respondents are from the United States, the report has global implications. See this analysis by UK-based Kevin Harris, author of the Neighbourhoods blog, reprinted here in its entirety with Kevin’s permission (thanks Kevin):

Online communication in neighbourhoods: not just people we know

The latest Pew Internet Project report has just been published, on the topic of ‘neighbors online’.

It’s based on telephone interviews with 2,258 Americans, and while I didn’t read anything that hit the wow-box it certainly helps us think about communication at neighbourhood level. The questions asked about face-to-face interaction with neighbours, telephone contact, and a range of local online resources.

Unsurprisingly (and as last year’s Pew Internet study demonstrated) internet users are just as likely as non-users to discuss local issues face-to-face. People in higher income households and with higher educational attainment are more likely to talk face-to-face with neighbours about local issues.

Between 4% and 11% of all those surveyed exchange email with their neighbours about local issues, read a blog dealing with local issues, or are signed up to a locally-focussed online forum or social network. This is baseline data, hopefully Pew will repeat the questions every now and then.

For me the most interesting finding was this: (more…)

Survey of Interests, Needs, and Skills (INs)

in community engagement, Free Libraries Online

Here’s a tool you might be able to use to get a better appreciation of the interests, skills, and needs of your constituents, and to help them connect with one another, and with other local resources. You can download the pdf by clicking on the image below. You can also edit and download the form, in spreadsheet format, here (some formatting was lost in the file translation).

The form was designed for residents of multi-family subsidized housing communities. We didn’t use some of items from the original Capacity Inventory (Kretzmann & McKnight 1993), but kept them in a separate tab (Skills, column J), so you can just copy & paste as needed.

Most respondents completed the form in under eight minutes, with some, who answered the open-ended questions at the end of the survey, taking up to 15 minutes.

Matt Singh (a fellow founder of the Idealist Silicon Valley group) and I developed the form, which we derived (with thanks) from several sources:

We’d appreciate your feedback. And as we roll this out to more residents, we’ll need online/offline tools to make it easier for them to match their interests, needs, and skills with those of their neighbors. Any ideas?

11 Drivers of Community Attachment – Ranked. Findings from “Soul of the Community”, a Gallup/Knight study

in community engagement, Free Libraries Online

The goal of the Knight Foundation-Gallup Soul of the Community project is to explore how community qualities influence residents’ feelings about where they live, and how those perceptions relate to local economic growth and vitality.

Gallup interviewed a group of randomly selected adults age 18 or older, currently residing in each of the 26 Knight Foundation Communities. Interviews took place from February 17th through April 26, 2009. The interview was approximately 18 minutes long and covered 86 questions. The sample for each community was a representative selection of residential household telephone numbers in the defined area. Once a household within the identified area was reached, Gallup randomly selected one adult within the sampled household. Each county within a community was sampled proportionally to the adult population in each area. About 400 citizen interviews were completed in most of the Knight communities – 28,000 nationwide, over the past two years.

CA Map

Main findings

Overall, 24% of citizens are attached to the community in which they live; 40% are not attached.

Gallup identified two key components of Community Attachment (CA):

  1. Attitudinal Loyalty, describes citizens’ general satisfaction with place, their likelihood to recommend it to others, and their outlook for their community’s future.
    1. 60% of respondents were satisfied with their community (25% highly satisfied)
    2. 57% were like to recommend it to others (30% very likely)
    3. 44% had a positive outlook for their community (17% very positive)
  2. Passion, captures the connection to place and the pride taken in living there.
    1. 66% of respondents are proud to live in their community (38% very proud)
    2. 57% believe their community is perfect for them (29% feel this strongly)

Gallup also identified five key dimensions (domains) of community, and a citizen’s connection to it, which drive overall CA. These five domains describe perceptions of:

  1. the basic structural, economic, and leadership offerings of the community (what the community gives or offers its residents),
  2. perceptions of the community’s openness to different groups (what the community stands for in diversity),
  3. citizen involvement in the community (what citizens give back to the community),
  4. the people connections they have to that community (how citizens belong to the community), and
  5. citizen’s personal state of well being (how the person feels and copes in the environment).

CA ModelCommunities which are strong on all five domains (and thus have high overall attachment) have the greatest opportunity to attract and retain the most desirable citizens for driving economic and social success. Each Domain has a different level of impact on CA. These domains were further broken out into eleven aspects, which affected a resident’s attachment to the community. Together, these domains explain about 40% of the overall variance in CA (based on logistic regression). So if we can move (i.e. improve) these 11 aspects (and more specifically the ones with the highest influence) we should be able to move CA.

In descending order:

  1. Openness – Perceptions of openness of the community to different groups (older people, racial and ethnic minorities, families with kids, gays and lesbians, talented college graduates, immigrants)
  2. Social Offerings – Vibrant night life; good place to meet people; other people care about each other
  3. Aesthetics – Parks, playgrounds, and trails; beauty or physical setting
  4. Education – Quality of public schools (K-12), colleges, and universities
  5. Basic Services – Highways and freeway system, availability of quality healthcare, availability of affordable housing
  6. Leadership – Community leaders represent residents’ interests; leadership of elected city officials
  7. Economy – Economic conditions & prospects, job opportunities, income
  8. Emotional Wellness – The personal well being of citizens (respect, rest, stress, learning)
  9. Safety – Level of community crime; safe to walk within 1 mile of home
  10. Social Capital – The people-connections citizens have to the community and how they share time with others (belong to formal/informal groups/clubs; spend time with neighbors; close friends in community; family in community)
  11. Civic Involvement – What residents give to the community in terms of civic involvement (volunteer; voted in local election; attend local community meetings; work with residents to make change)

Key Attachment Drivers

Learn more: 2009 – Full Report(PDF), 2009 – Presentation(PPT), 2009 – Data (ZIP, DOC, POR – asks for email)