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Friends & Neighbors

Friends & Neighbors

For Communities to Work

David Mathews -
Excerpts and illustrations from For Communities to Work, by David Mathews, © the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, posted by permission. To download the complete work click here. Having spent studying communities, the Kettering Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization, has...
Friends & Neighbors

12 Thoughts on Inclusive Community Building for 2016

Cormac Russell -
January When we lose the ability to care for our neighbours, we also inadvertently chart a course towards a future wherein that carelessness becomes our inheritance. Neighbourliness is embodied in the practice of welcomiReflectionsng the stranger at the edge, and the...
Friends & Neighbors

Strategies for a New Economy

Michelle Long -
Recorded live at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics 2012 Strategies for a New Economy Conference in 2012, BALLE Executive Director Michelle Long speaks about the importance of investing in local business to advance the New Economy Movement.   Related   ...
Friends & Neighbors

Being Alive

Michelle Long -
BALLE Executive Director Michelle Long answers the question “If you had five minutes to convey what being alive means to you, what would you say?”   Re-posted from the “Stories from the Road” web short series from Festival of Faiths, which used...
Friends & Neighbors

Encyclopedia House

Al Etmanski -
The house pictured here stands amidst a grove of trees in the Newton community of Surrey, British Columbia, my hometown. The ‘bricks’ are mainly encyclopedias, textbooks and reference books. All were discarded, unwanted and destined for the dump until...
Friends & Neighbors

10 Ways to Become More Grateful

Robert A. Emmons -
1. Keep a Gratitude Journal Establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits, and good things you enjoy. Setting aside time on a daily basis to recall moments of gratitude associated with ordinary events,...
Friends & Neighbors

The Economics of Compassion: Can This City Wipe Out Debt by 2019?

Sarah van Gelder -
Cincinnati, Ohio, is among the fastest growing cities in the Midwest. It hosts corporate giants like Procter & Gamble and Kroger, and some of its close-in neighborhoods have become chic, with coffee shops and new condominiums. But prosperity is not...
Friends & Neighbors

New Scoop Interviews Member Peter Block

Sarah Arthurs -
Peter Block is the author of Community: The Structure of Belonging and one of the leading thinkers about community development. We were very excited when he became a member of New Scoop last winter and recently asked him why he joined...
Friends & Neighbors

John McKnight: What I Have Learned So Far

Philip Booth -
John reflects on ABCD's history, practice and future in his keynote address at the 2015 ABCD Festival held in Blackpool, England, to mark the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Asset Based Community Development Institute.   Video by Philip Booth.  
Conversations

A Place at the Table

Edd Conboy -
Conversation with John McKnight, Peter Block and Guest Edd Conboy TalkShoe Radio  ~  August 8, 2015 https://www.talkshoe.com/recording/attachment/key/19dba83a6619d51024249edf98bb5c335fa30d23.mp3 Peter: I met Edd Conboy about three years ago when I was a guest at a daylong conference and I was able to get a...
Friends & Neighbors

A River Runs through John

Al Etmanski -
Cormac Russell Note: The following is a guest blog written by Al Etmanski (aletmanski.com) . Al is a community organizer, social entrepreneur and author. John McKnight is his friend. Al's new book is Impact: Six Patterns to Spread Your Social Innovation. There is a...
Friends & Neighbors

Innovation Is Birthed from Disorder

Al Etmanski -
Here’s some advice for the explorer in you who desires to make the world better, particularly the young bright sparks who are just setting out. Trust all your senses. When your experience compels you to seek something different and your...
Friends & Neighbors

Giving In to Joy

Jeannie Masterson -
Ed. Note: John and Peter’s online/dial-up conversation with Edd Conboy on August 4 inspired a thought-provoking email exchange with Jeannie Masterson on scarcity, gifts, joy and abundance. Enjoy!   Peter, John, Edd – I listened to your conversation today, enjoying and being...
Friends & Neighbors

Ruston Seaman in Conversation with John McKnight

Peter Koestenbaum -
My comments on the deeply touching and intensely relevant conversation on faith during the June 2, 2015 Abundant Community “on-line interchange”   What motivates our business behaviors?  Personal gain or higher purpose, greed or social conscience?  Or what percentage of each? ...
Friends & Neighbors

Looking Back to Look Forward: The Intellectual Heritage of Asset-Based Community Development

Cormac Russell -
In 1995 John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann convened a circle of friends to help them establish the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at Northwestern University. The Institute was built on John and Jody’s work and research over more than...
Friends & Neighbors

Timebanking Rich in Possibilities

Michelle Strutzenberger -
Sometimes the significance of a happening revisits you much later. When, several years ago, I found myself in a carload of folks that included pioneer of timebanking, Edgar Cahn, I felt very honoured but certainly didn’t imagine what might...
Friends & Neighbors

Take a Walk on the Jane Side

Jay Walljasper -
Spring is back, so here's a fresh idea to celebrate the season and discover hidden pleasures in your neighborhood — organize a Jane’s Walk. Since 2007, thousands of people in more than 100 cities around the world enjoy May exploring nature, culture, history...
Friends & Neighbors

Jane Jacobs: A Woman Ahead of Her Time

David Bolllier -
Not many people have the imagination, intellectual depth and sheer courage to take on an entire profession and demonstrate how it is wrong. Jane Jacobs did. The renegade author and activist — who died in 2006 at age 89...
Friends & Neighbors

Social Innovation: A Definition of Opportunity

Al Etmanski -
When asked recently to define social innovation I replied rather off-handedly it’s a combination of the old, the new and the surprising. It’s not much of a definition but then again the ambiguity might be useful. Definitions all too often...
Friends & Neighbors

The Redemption of Silicon Valley

Peter Koestenbaum -
"About 1,700 people gathered at Stanford University for the memorial of David Goldberg on Tuesday." — News release. It was the culture of mechanical hi tech heartlessness paying homage, en masse, to the higher and deeper eternal virtues of human existence. The...
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Latest News

Latest ThinkingSteve Dubb -

Corporate Capture: Can We Find a Way Out?

This article, published originally by Nonprofit Quarterly, from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s summer 2024 issue, “Escaping Corporate Capture.” The aircraft manufacturer Boeing,...
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