Gifts

In 2011 I was involved in a year-long conversation with a group of active, insightful, and seasoned community builders. I recently wrote a piece on what I thought I heard and learned in our conversations and want to share...

“Health happens in neighborhoods, not doctors’ offices,” says Dr. Richard J. Jackson, professor and chairman of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a forthcoming public television series on ways to redesign the built environment...

After political scientist Daniel Aldrich faced Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans he started thinking about how neighbors help one another during disasters. He decided to visit disaster sites around the world, looking for data. From New Orleans to Japan...

The capacities of an abundant community are the core elements that need to be visible and manifest to create functional families and neighborhoods. One of the capacities of an abundant community is the ability to accept people’s fallibility.   A conspicuous...

I was in Las Vegas where I discovered a community — once on top of the world — fighting to come back in the wake of the Great Recession. What people in Las Vegas are doing offers a vision of...

Since July 2007 Steve Byers has hosted a monthly conversation at a fair trade café in downtown Olympia, Washington. “I convened this gathering so that colleagues and friends would have a regular opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation around...

  The American Academy of Pediatrics recently released a report urging that children under age two not be allowed to watch any shows on television, or on iPads, smartphones or computers. Among other reasons, the report notes that the noise...

Now aged 77, Edgar Cahn – or “Father Time” as he is known – is showing no signs of slowing down.  The US-born inventor of timebanking is at the end of a trip to the UK, during which he...