Care of People on the Margin

Chicago's Westside Health Authority started a quarter century ago when faced with declining government investment in healthcare neighbors asked, "What can WE do, and do it our way?" Created from the idea that citizens are the best authority on their own...

Pat Worth had been labeled retarded as a child and was living on a park bench when he decided to organize people who shared his experience. The organization he formed is now known as People First. In this video post,...

Flowers bloom alongside Quesada Avenue. Photo by Katherine Gustafson.   In 2002, two neighbors armed with spades and seeds changed everything for crime-addled Quesada Avenue in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point area. The street had been ground zero for the area’s drug trade...

The “institutional assumption” — for example, thinking in terms of medical care, clinics, insurance, outreach instead of health — is the most consistent failure in our thinking about change. If we start by looking at the condition we're interested in,...

It was the summer of 2009. I was on my second day of work for the U.S. Census Bureau, knocking on doors in rural South Carolina. My cell phone rang. It was my supervisor. “Patrice, headquarters called me and told me...

Abundant communities start with making visible the gifts of everyone in the neighborhood—the families, the young people, the old people, the vulnerable people, the troublesome people. Everyone. We do this not out of altruism, but to create the elements...

  Home page photo: Schani