Community Strength

Community Weaving: A New Solution for a New Century
WEB Reference - Community Weaving is a social change methodology that incorporates the use of web-based technology to weave the human and tangible resources of the grassroots with the knowledge and skills of formal systems. The approach raises social consciousness and awakens the human spirit to its purpose by engaging people to take responsibility for what they care about to create a more caring, just and civil society. The theories and practices underpinning Community Weaving create village effects, unfettered by bureaucracy, politics, religious doctrine, racism, or socioeconomic status, that transcend cultures. This transformative community building approach weaves a multi-cultural community tapestry of connections within communities, across organizations and around the world. http://www.communityweaving.org/overview.htm

Mainstream Wake-Up

When a Cheap House Isn’t a Bargain
USA - October, 2006 (Jan Metzger, Next American City) - For most American households, wealth is perceived as the value of the family home. But it turns out that a relatively inexpensive home with a three-car garage in a remote suburban subdivision is not the same “deal” as a similarly priced home in a more urban area when one factors in transportation costs. Many people moving to distant suburbs for cheap housing may not in the end save money or build as much wealth. http://info.cnt.org/~annette/CNT%20Update/H+T_NAC_06.pdf

Social Enterprise and Innovation

Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses
WEB Reference, September 28, 2006 (ILSR) - In less than two decades, large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising pollution and diminished civic engagement—and she shows how a growing number of communities and independent businesses are effectively fighting back. http://www.bigboxswindle.com/index.php

Community Ownership / Commons

Speak Up! Public Spaces and Democracy
VANCOUVER, BC, October 17, 2006, (Vancouver Public Library) - Join us as Speak Up explores the nature of our public spaces and their relationship to democracy. Are our public spaces increasing or decreasing? What are the important public spaces in Vancouver? Are the private spaces of shopping malls now our most popular gathering spaces? Do public spaces always have to be public squares? What are the trends in public space development in Vancouver and world-wide? What is the impact of "naming opportunities" for our public spaces? What is the relationship between public spaces and democracy? http://www.vpl.ca/speakup/public-space.html

Micro-credit Projects win Nobel Peace Prize
Oslo, October 16, 2006, (Associated Press) - Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pioneering the use of seemingly insignificant loans — microcredit — to lift millions out of poverty. Through Yunus's efforts and those of the bank he founded, poor people around the world, especially women, have been able to buy cows, a few chickens or the cellphone they desperately needed to get ahead. "Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty," the Nobel Committee said in its citation. "Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights."
http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2006/10/banker_to_the_p.html

Guide: Best Practices in Volunteer Management
WEB Resource, October 2006 (Sustainability Network) - This action-planning guide was created through the Canada Volunteerism Initiative to help strengthen volunteer management practices within small and rural nonprofit organizations. It is organized into ten sections based on the ten best practices of the Canadian Code for Volunteer Involvement’s Organization Standards. Created by the Yukon Volunteer Bureau, the guide will help organizations create a framework for ongoing work with volunteers. The assessment questions allow organizations to determine their priorities and ensure the best approach for their specific group.
http://sustain.web.ca/Nexus/Alberta/10-06.htm#6

Activists For Community
WEB Reference, Summer 2001 (Bob Glotzbach And Gena Van Camp, Community Journal) - We Are An Elder Couple In Our mid-70s, who have been together for 14 years, living and working as community activists for the last 12 in the small town of Glen Ellen, California. Both of us have had a long history of experiences in established intentional communities, in ones that were forming, and in groups and associations in mainstream towns and neighborhoods. Working cooperatively with others, finding a sense of place wherever we’ve lived, these experiences seem to have built on themselves and give direction to our lives. It is through personal experiences that we have learned to be more effective activists. http://www.communitysolution.org/pdfs/archive/2001_07_.PDF