The US Pew Partnership for Civic Change has a Smart Communities blog, written by their president Suzanne Morse, raising issues that have worldwide resonance. This week they offer Our Ten Smart Resolutions for the New Year. In summary they are:
- Keep kids in your community in school.
- Reduce the number of hungry people in your community.
- Get involved in some organization outside of your work or immediate circle.
- Find out about your affordable housing market.
- Make quality daycare accessible to all in your community.
- Be sure that every child in your community has a caring adult in his or her life.
- Revive and support rural communities.
- Let's put the civil back in civilization in the New Year.
- Let's really solve some problems.
- 2006 needs to be the year of working together. We have issues that can only be solved with a collective will and mission. Our goal for 2006 must be to create possibilities together.
Suzanne expands on each resolution and adds:
The evidence is overwhelming that when regions come together, organizations come together, or neighborhoods come together, then big things happen—not just one time but over and over. If you serve in an elected office—reach out. If you run a nonprofit organization—find a way to work with another organization. And if you are concerned about something or have an idea for change—find some people to talk with about it. Many of the challenges we face could be solved if we could work together. As Wendell Berry once said, "One's real duty to the future is to do as you should do now. Make the best choices, do the best work, fulfill your obligations in the best way you can."
I think all of that will resonate with community activists and policymakers in the UK, and the Pew Partnership commitment to blogging makes it easier to share experience on how to tackle these issues. We could do with a few leaders of UK nonprofits following suit.
Over at the NCVO ICT Foresight blog Milica Howell of the Hansard Society explains in If you've got it, flaunt it how they are working together with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations on the first strand of a project on Democracy, campaigning and activism.
The research is designed to illustrate ways in which information and communication technology (ICT) might empower charitable, community and voluntary sector organisations and their supporters and identify comparisons with citizen engagement in politics.
Maybe the research can offer busy chief executives an answer to the question "why bother to blog?". Meanwhile I'll see if Suzanne would like to provide some answers from her experience.
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