Gifts

Most Thursday evenings I spend in the garden at Ward and Chandler.* Usually I am by myself, puttering. Last night was different. If you had come by the garden yesterday you would have seen neighbors “shopping” among the rows. In...

Introduce the person to others by first describing his/her gift. Ask the person to tell you about people they have met who they think have a similar gift. Ask the person to tell you a story about a...

“We are not just what we eat but how we eat,” says John Schwenkler, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, in a recent article on nourishing America from The Philanthropic Enterprise’s Trends in Innovation series. Americans...

John McKnight video by Social Innovation Generation John explains why all big change grows from the small stuff in local communities.       Video by Social Innovation Generation used with permission. Home page image: Jenny Downing.

"We aim to be the first neighborhood where every child and the neighborhood are thriving because, together as neighbors, we are following the lead of NEIGHBORKIDS." That’s the thinking behind the Sarasota Community Studio, opened in the Florida city’s Central-Cocoanut neighborhood...

These days, the big issues of our time are digested and disseminated by cable news, internet blogs, and tweets—and repeated by everyday people in our common conversations. But the choices about how that digestion happens—about how big stories are...

John tells a story to show the difference between the world of facts, data, systematic information and the community's way of knowing: the story. And the most important thing in strong communities is having true stories, stories that match our experience.    

Pushing my grocery cart down the aisle, I spot on the fruit counter a dozen plastic bags of bananas labeled “Organic, Equal Exchange.” My heart leaps a little. I’d been thrilled, months earlier, when I found my local grocer...

The challenge of modern life seems to be to learn how to cope with paradox and the sense of crazy-making it can produce. News reports are filled with horrendous tales that portray the most unpredictable elements of nature and...