The Moment for Community Has Arrived
by Peter Block A World Divided Isolation is on the rise in our neighborhoods, institutions, cities,
Pioneering Space for the Commons
In the city of Peterborough, Ontario, The Mount Community Centre is repurposing what was once home
Community Harm Reduction for Addicts
Ann Livingston shares how the opening of Insite, Vancouver’s legal supervised injection site, was a political
Creating Community: Podcast
What does community mean, and what creates a sense of belonging? What’s the entry point to
Building Community in an Era of Isolation
The revised edition of Community: The Structure of Belonging was born out of a recognition that
Returning Death to Community
What’s possible when we explore the idea of death, dying and living well from the perspective
Cat or Dog? Reflections on Life In the Turn Lane
By Beverly Jones Here’s a suggestion I hadn’t heard: Be a cat if you don’t want
Community Addicts
Ann Livingston is a community organizer from Vancouver, Canada. As a leader of “VANDU,” a community
An Introduction to ABCD
A two-day workshop introducing the principles and applications of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) in the context
Common Good Fellowship pilot beginsFellowship program provides community for radical leaders
Last week 33 change makers in the Common Good Fellowship pilot program convened in Cincinnati for
Organizing the Unorganizables
Conversation with Ann Livingston Download or listen to John and Peter’s March 27, 2018 conversation with
Walter Brueggemann: Pharaoh’s Economy Today
An intimate and powerful talk by Walter Brueggemann on how the modern economy reflects the essence
How Neighborhoods Engage with Local Governments
How are institutions and government most useful in supporting neighbor driven initiatives? What can we do with a little bit of outside assistance? And what do we need somebody from the outside to do? Ron Dwyer-Voss asks these three questions in his work engaging with community groups who want to have stronger relationships with local government.
Ron, owner and founder of Pacific Community Solutions, uses the Asset-Based Community Development process with community groups to help them identify how they can do something to create transformation. He shares with John McKnight and Peter Block stories and insights such as the importance of including reflection and learning conversations as part of the process.
Listen:
On Finding Freedom
What is the price we pay for freedom? What are the choices and consequences that come
Debt and Usary in Islam
Islam has a powerful view on debt forgiveness and welcoming the stranger. Dr. Waleed El-Ansary shares
ABCD Workshop Coming to Cincinnati
You’re invited to participate in an engaging two-day Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach workshop led by
Announcing Common Good
Walter Brueggemann, John McKnight and Peter Block are the curators and conversation partners for the first
Homeless: Technology Leveling the Playing Field
By: Ras Tafari What is it like to be homeless? Ras Tafari shares about living out
Podcast: Freeing Yourself from Consumer Culture
What is the free market consumer ideology? How does its assumptions affect our lives? In this “The One You Feed” podcast, guest Peter Block discusses concepts from his book, An Other Kingdom, including the pillars of the free market consumer ideology: Scarcity, Certainty, Perfection, and Privatization. As people search for meaning and freedom, Peter shares how neighborliness and covenant are part of an alternative narrative.
Listen:
Quotes:
“Questions bring us together. Answers alienate us.”
“The scarcity mindset is a lie. There is enough.”
“The ‘how’ question destroys our faith in each other, as if the only thing that matters is how long, how much, how predicable.”
Related Read:
Peter Block on the Shadow Side of Culture
We live in a consumer driven market driven culture. How does this impact our lives? What
The Consumer Economy and its Crushing Assumptions
By Peter Block What assumptions form the dominant free market consumer economy? What is an alternative
The Jubilee Campaign
What is a Jubilee Year, and how does this Old Testament idea relate to today’s economy?
Ground-breaking grocery store
Fare & Square VP of Retail Operations Mike Basher shares insight into the Chester, Pennsylvania supermarket formed by a Philadelphia food bank (Philabundance). Fare & Square is the first nonprofit grocery store of its kind in the U.S. bringing healthy, affordable food to what was once a food desert.
Operating in a low-income neighborhood, the store takes an interest in sharing how to prepare healthy food for low cost. Competing for low prices on meats, offering a special carry cash rewards system and educating customers on different choices are some of the ways Fare & Square is uniquely serving its community.
Don’t miss listening to the full conversation and hear how this model could be replicated across the country.
Listen:
Quotes:
“We’re trying to provide families in this community fresh affordable healthy foods that they can get right in their own back yards.” – Mike Basher
Related Links:
Fare & Square (store website)
Chester’s Nonprofit Food Market Tries to Square Mission with Bottom Line (online feature by Laura Benshoff for WHYY)
Chester Supermarket, ‘Fare & Square’ Changing Lives in Community (news clip by Matt DeLucia, NBC10 News)
The Poverty Industrial Complex
This article by Monica McGloin (edited by Trenton Davis), originally published in Streetvibes newspaper, discusses the
Engaging Neighbors Opens Thinking for Health Professionals
Lisa Gale Hadden, Michigan Area Health Education Center executive director, has learned that when medical and nursing students go to neighborhoods to talk with families about their health they discover untapped resources and assets.
“They really saw the value in connecting to the neighborhood health wisdom and used that to become better health care professionals. It changed their care planning for their patients.” Students asked appreciative, open-ended questions to discover how neighbors define their own health in their own terms. Twenty years later, the students have who are now practitioners are still talking about it.
In this conversation, Lisa – who acts as a bridge between medical and community knowledge in her work – shares more about this experience with John McKnight and Peter Block.
Listen:
Quotes:
“The more that there’s income equality in a community, or city, or town the healthier people are.” – Lisa Gale Hadden
“Our advice (to students) has always been . . . you’re there first and foremost to just be a neighbor. I think our students really began to see that as they developed relationships with our neighbors.” – Lisa Gale Hadden
Exploring transformational neighborhood change: Rich Jones
What happens when neighborhoods change? This article by Rich Jones, originally published in Streetvibes newspaper, explores
PeoplesHub: Connecting change-makers online
How can we connect local change-making pioneers and reduce their sense of isolation? A new, online platform called PeoplesHub will bring interactive, participative processes to local neighborhood groups and connect them to trainers and other groups across the country.
Sarah van Gelder, co-founder of YES! Magazine, says PeoplesHub training will range from general topics – such as how to host an ecstatic meeting and how to navigate conflict – to providing tools for specific areas of change people are working on.
Instead of bottom-up or top-down, the platform promotes lateral connections amongst people who are engaged in social innovations. In this call with Peter Block and John McKnight, Sarah discusses the initial phases of the new online platform and its methodology.
Listen here:
Quotes:
“(The) power that people have in their own communities to get stuff done … if we can unleash that power, we can have a real transformation of this country.” – Sarah van Gelder
Related Link:
revolutionwhereyoulive.org
Cormac Russell: Health Beyond Healthcare
In the UK, 40 percent of people engaging with the biomedical world through their GP are
The Good Life Conversation
Cormac Russell developed a set of 25 questions to create more life enhancing conversations. In his