In an article for a special issue of the National Civic Review on the civics of sustainability a couple of years ago, Joel Mills, director of the Center for Communities by  Design, noted a correlation between civic capacity and environmental sustainability.

He later blogged on our All-America City Award site about Dubuque, Iowa, a city I’ve mentioned in a previous post for its success in engaging residents in large scale strategic planning sessions. As Joel noted, Dubuque’s efforts in the sustainability field were getting noticed. The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Dubuque as one of “three partner cities for its new Green Lab initiative to develop best practices in sustainability and preservation.”

Also, “the Obama administration included the city on its tour of America to highlight urban success stories. IBM recently announced that Dubuque will serve as its first Smart City partnership in the United States, with the hope that it can develop a model for other communities regarding energy efficiency.”

Lakewood, Colorado, an All-Amereica City in 2011 is another good example. Lakewood has done a lot to engage residents in budgeting and planning efforts. So with a hat tip to Joel, let me point out that Lakewood, an All-America City in 2011, is also green pioneer.

It all began a few years ago when the Learning Source, one of the country’s biggest adult literacy programs, realized its utility costs were higher than that of a 50-unit apartment building. Worried about the rising costs, the Lakewood-based nonprofit organization began looking for information about energy efficiency.

A conversation with members of the Alameda Community Gateway Association led to more conversations and, eventually, the founding of a “Greening Lakewood Business Partnership,” a public-private collaboration with a twofold mission: 1) to bring energy efficiency to the more than 1,500 existing office and commercial buildings in Lakewood; 2) to provide job training for local residents, including military veterans, particularly those returning from the current overseas conflicts.

First in line for an energy makeover was the Learning Source, which reduced its utility costs from $3,500 a month to $200. The renovations included exterior building insulation, a multistage boiler system, an efficient condensing unit and upgrades to the air handler. An energy management system, solar lighting and photovoltaic and thermal solar panels on two sections of new roof also were added.

City government takes the lead in facilitating relationships with the utility company, the banking community and the Governor’s Energy Office. The Better Business Bureau is providing marketing for the partnership. Other partners include Red Rocks Community College, the Alameda Gateway Community Association, Veterans Green Jobs, the Jefferson County Workforce Center and the Better Business Bureau, each agency has played a unique role in developing the program.

As Lakewood Mayor Bob Murphy sees it, the partnership is both a win-win and a “great catalyst” for the community. “It creates jobs, particularly for veterans, provides the training and encourages sustainability,” he says. “Most importantly, it helps our small businesses. Money saved on energy bills can be reinvested in inventories and new hiring.”

Red Rocks Community Colleges developed an energy-auditing, retrofitting and financing curriculum for students. Under the direction of experienced proctors, the students gain field experience needed to pass industry auditing certification tests by conducting the free audits for businesses. The Veterans for Green Jobs mobilize the military veterans to enter the Red Rocks program. The Jefferson County Workforce Center coordinates funds providing paid internships for the students.

Another local Greening effort is the Sustainable Neighborhoods Program for homeowners and apartment dwellers and owners. The program creates partnerships between the city and various neighborhoods to complete projects, host workshops or design other creative ways to engage in sustainable practices.

The city gives annual Sustainability Awards to inspire community members and hosts an annual Earth Week festival that includes an expo of displays, hands-on demonstrations, live music and information on sustainable practices, lectures, tours and cleanup and educational activities.

Two things Dubuque and Lakewood have in common is that both communities have long histories in engaging groups and individuals in creative partnerships. Both cities recognize that they can’t go it alone, and the ability to work across boundaries is essential in tackling difficult challenges such as environmental sustainability.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Selma Middle and Clayton High Schools in Selma, North Carolina

School Spotlight commends Selma Middle and Clayton High Schools’ students celebration honoring Black History Month. As their program states, these young African-Americans are “Remembering the Past … Shaping the Future.” (To read the original article in its entirety, click here.)

Students from Selma Middle were invited to attend a “Black History Month” event hosted by “Men of Distinction” — a community organization including members of the local Smithfield chapter of the Kappa fraternity and nine members who are students at Clayton High School. The purpose of the event was multifaceted:

• A kick-off in helping them celebrate “Black History Month”
• To encourage Selma Middle’s minority male students to pursue their education,
• Encourage and help them understand the importance of making wise decisions,
• Encourage them to realize and aspire to achieve their fullest potential.

Marlon Lee, advisor for Men of Distinction was happy with the outcome of the event stating, “I think hearing from the high school students was really good for [the Selma Middle students].” Selma can be a tough area to grow up in, but they do not want that to become a reason not to try. So, it helps when someone close in age tells them they can accomplish whatever they aspire to do. That kind of encouragement goes a long way.

At the event, Selma students learned it is necessary to do more than just strive to “pass their classes,” — they want them to excel. These young minority students are learning that there is still a chance for them to be pioneers in many areas of the world, things that they can be first at. Lee reiterated this with his becoming the first black man to become coach for Clayton High School at the varsity level.

The students from Clayton High are already “Men of Distinction” and well on their way to becoming leaders for their younger counterparts. Add to this the willingness of Selma Middle’s students to listen and follow Men of Distinction, and it creates a recipe for great success. Perhaps these two schools have hit upon an integral part of the equation that is missing — youth inspired youth leaders.

The encouragement of young men by schools, community and organizations to grow their knowledge of minority figures in America’s history helps get them in touch with greatness that they can identify with. These students from Selma Middle and Clayton High already possess the fibers found in some of the greatest figures in all of history.

As more schools participate in projects for Black History Month, more heroes and leaders are being identified and revered for their part in edging America toward becoming a better place. Do you know of a special project or program going on in your community that is helping to promote and cultivate young leaders? Use the box below to fill us in on the beautiful details.

A funny thing happened a few years ago when I was sitting down to write the “Note from the Editor” for a special issue of the National Civic Review on “Diversity, Social Capital, and Immigrant Integration.” A colleague e-mailed me a January 26, 2009, article in Newsweek about Lewiston, Maine, a winner of the All-America City Award in 2007. The article is entitled, “The Refugees That Saved Lewiston.”

The author, Jesse Ellison, begins by describing how Lewiston, once a “bustling mill town,” had been shrinking since the 1970s. Jobs had vanished, the population was aging, and the downtown area was falling into disrepair. “That was before a family of Somali refugees discovered Lewiston in 2001 and began spreading the word to immigrant friends and relatives that housing was cheap and it looked like a good place to build new lives and raise children in peace.

“Since then the place has been transformed. Per capita income has soared, and crime rates have dropped.” There’s a great quote from Chip Morrison, president of the local chamber of commerce. “No one could have dreamed this,” he says. “Not even me, and I’m an optimist.”

From a cursory reading of the Newsweek article, you might even think that every fading New England mill town should go out and recruit some East African refugees, but of course, it’s not that easy. Lewiston won the All-America City Award in part because of its innovative New Mainers Partnership, a collaborative effort of the cities of Lewiston and Portland, Catholic Charities, and the State of Maine.

In the beginning Lewiston was ill-prepared to deal with this new population, not having had an existing refugee resettlement agency, or for that matter a considerable immigrant population when the Somalis began to trickle in. But somehow, they managed to turn a potential liability into an asset.

We like to think of ourselves as a “nation of immigrants,” or at least John F. Kennedy did when he chose that phrase for the title of a book published posthumously in 1964. It might be more accurate to say, however, that we are a nation of immigrants and “receiving communities” in which succeeding waves of the former have been met with decidedly mixed emotions by the latter.

Benjamin Franklin apparently complained about the growing population of Germans, who he thought had different values and even different complexions. This pattern of ambivalence has continued through subsequent migrations—the Irish, Asians, Italians, Eastern Europeans and Latin Americans.

The disorientation that many receiving communities began to experience in the early late 1990s and 2000s was a difference in magnitude, about one half a million a year, as opposed to about a mere 200,000 in 1960. Also, until the 1990s, there were effectively only six “gateway” states for recent immigrants—California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois.

But now small towns and suburbs which had never experienced challenges and benefits associated with large-scale immigration were beginning to come to terms with the new realities—multiple languages spoken in their schools, interpreters needed at county hospitals and courts, religious practices that required accommodations in the workplace, to name a few.

“We are only as strong as our willingness to work together,” noted Statesville, North Carolina, Mayor Costi Kutteh when he revisited the city’s vision statement a few years ago. Residents and local government recommitted themselves to addressing a widening divide between the south side of the city and the “other side,” which was home to many of the community’s rapidly growing population of Spanish speakers. One strategy was the development of Mi Familia Institute to help the city’s Spanish speaking newcomers. Its program of financial planning and social services worked to strengthen family and community ties.

In the 2000s, the community impacts of immigration would become a bigger focus of the National Civic League’s work. Diversity and immigration programs are often featured in community presentations during the annual All-America City awards program. Recent examples would be Lewiston, Maine; Aurora, Colorado; Statesville, North Carolina and Fort Wayne, Indiana and Scott City, Kansas. Through our Community Success program we were part of a statewide immigrant integration program in Colorado.

When the economy took a nose dive in 2008, the immigration issue went from begin a “hot button” political issue to being a back burner issue, although it seems to have cropped up quite a bit in the Republican primary debates. For the most part, however, the poor economy meant the jobs magnet pulling immigrants in from across the world was less powerful.
But here at the league, we were never concerned with the debate over federal immigration policy. Our concern was always: how communities are responding to the challenges and opportunities of being one of these new gateways—from Lewiston, Maine, to Statesville, North Carolina.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Entertainment. Most of us think of it in terms of television, smartphones, laptops and iPads. At least this is how many incorporate it into daily living. In fact, it would not take very long to look around and find toddlers, children and adolescents glued to electronic devices. However, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recent study findings warn that this habit can be detrimental to the development of young children having too much exposure to these devices. To help combat this, State of the Re:Union contributor John McKnight of Abundant Community offers some great and easy ideas on how we can “unplug” and get  back to the origins of entertainment. To read the original text in its entirety, click here.

It may be that most of us are not alarmed by “tube-nurtured” children because we think that what is happening is entertainment — innocent and pleasurable. Therefore, we don’t recognize the fact that the tube is replacing play and genuine entertainment created by children, families and communities. In fact, the word “entertainment” is derived from the Old French which meant “hold together.” Its essence is about relationships between people rather than people and “tubes.”

There is an interesting monograph first printed in 1928 titled “Baraboo 1850’s to 1860’s Pioneer Festivities.” It describes how people entertained themselves in the decade of the 1850’s in the small Wisconsin town of Baraboo. The monograph documents entertainments produced by the residents including (these are just a few in many depictions):

•    Fourth of July celebrations that went on all day and evening.
•    New Year’s day celebrated as a time of gift giving and calling on neighbors and friends.
•    Berrying parties and apple-bees where everyone joined together in forests and orchards.
•    Afternoon tea parties.
•    Public dances of every kind, with local musicians providing the music.
•    Village gatherings to watch the dancing of Native Americans who still lived in the area.
•    Pound parties where everyone attending brought a pound of food to be shared with a poor family.
•    Festivals throughout the community held frequently to raise money for good causes.
•    Park festivities where public gatherings of every kind took place in the village.

This is a history of entertainment, festivity and play that was produced by everyday people in so many ways that most days had at least one entertainment. People knew how to create activities that would be fun, inspiring, social and informative. In that sense they were capable of creating a community’s enjoyment.

In a “tube-focused” community, many people have lost the capacity to produce an enjoyable life. Instead they are consumers of commercial “entertainment.” And because so many of them have never engaged in creating and participating in entertainment, there’s no need for us to develop our talents. We pay to watch people with talent on a tube. And everyone knows that “tubing” has nothing to do with a festive life. Instead it is a sad retreat from the joy of using our abilities to celebrate each other by coming together in a thousand exciting, happy, supportive, friend-making, talent-displaying ways.

So, supposing your 2012 New Year’s resolutions included personal leadership in creating an enjoyable neighborhood. We can begin by recognizing that we still know how to celebrate weddings, birthdays, graduations and holidays with our relatives. The people of Baraboo in the 1850’s have created a community celebration menu for us to build upon. We can join together with our neighbors to have gardening, tea, quilting and book parties. We can open our houses of worship to all kinds of neighborhood celebrations. We can create opportunities to dance together, sing together, make music together and raise money together. We can join in enjoying the talents of our children and debates of public issues.

In all these ways, we can become a real community where we know everyone by name and experience their unique talents. Best of all, we can become real neighbors celebrating life together rather than living isolated lives in houses where electric tubes create a counterfeit life for us and our families.

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John McKnight is an expert on communities. An Ohio native who currently lives near Chicago, he has spent decades organizing communities and researching them, primarily in the Windy City itself. In the course of his career, he mobilized neighborhoods during the civil rights movement, wrote several books about community development, created a center for urban affairs at Northwestern University, and even taught the current President a thing or two about advocacy. (Yes, it’s true: way back when, a young and eager Barack Obama interned at McKnight’s training program for community organizers in southeast Chicago). If that’s not enough, he recently co-authored a book called “The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.”

State of the Re:Union will be featuring pieces from John McKnight and Peter Block of Abundant Community every other Monday.

The Vito Marcantonio School in East Harlem, New York

This week’s School Spotlight is highlighting one school in East Harlem, New York, where students and staff, with the help of a City Year corp member, are serious about their commitment to and practice of “whole student” philosophy of learning and living.  In fact, to them, it’s just “Common Sense.” To read the original GOOD.is article in its entirety, click here.

In the recent past, the 330 students of the Vito Marcantionio School decided to participate in the Penny Harvest program — a service learning project run by City Year and the nonprofit Common Cents. City Year corp member Meg Malone was somewhat surprised at the tenacity and desire of these children. Of her students Malone says, “I often tell people that just because my students have a higher risk of dropping out of school, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to be active citizens and make a difference in their community.”

In an effort to create more interest in the Penny Harvest program, some students took it upon themselves to hop on the campaign trail and get their peers more involved. Songs were created and sung over the P.A. system to help generate more awareness about the program; and when one fifth grader decided there were not enough signs providing information on Penny Harvest, she created one she thought would get the job done of getting the information out.

Their enthusiasm for gathering funds to help others in need was quite astounding, especially given that a great many of the students are from a low-income background. This just further proves the students have incredible social awareness by recognizing that others around them are in need of help. It also shows their capacity for becoming even more outstanding humanitarians and civic stewards.

After all of the funds for the program had been collected at the months end, a committee of students was needed to help with the allocating of funds. According to the article, “A team of fourth- through eighth-grade students was selected to be the voice of the student body. Throughout the year, they’ll learn more about various community issues and (with the vision of the student population in mind), they’ll choose an organization to donate the money.” Although this is a large and tedious project these students are taking on, they are up for the challenge.

This Penny Harvest project has brought about some teachable moments for staff and kids, alike. It has prompted them to look at the good others are doing in the country (and world). They are becoming more interested in what civic engagement means and how it enriches the community. They are seeing a change, and realizing, they are heroes for their community.

The biggest lesson they are learning: Students plus “Common Cents” equals great community. Making a change and helping others become more interested in the desire to partake in change need not be laborious, grueling or demanding. Most times it is the smallest ideas that produce impressive results. Have a similar story of teachable moments and making civic engagement fun? We love learning about the good growing in our country, so use the box below to share some of your stories.

Thirty years ago, the main vehicle for citizen participation—other than voting—was the public hearing. Public hearings are well and good, but they often serve as little more than a steam-valve for irate citizens to vent. In fact, the very term “public hearing” is considered by many civic experts to be something of a misnomer.

Dan Kemmis, a former Missoula mayor and speaker of the Montana House of Representatives, said it best in this book, Community and the Politics of Place: “Out of everything that happens at a public hearing, the emoting, the attempts to persuade the decision-maker, the presentation of facts, the one element that is almost totally lacking is anything that might be characterized as public hearing.”

More and more communities are discovering new and betters ways of talking about (and hearing about) public issues. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for instance, an all-volunteer organization known as Portsmouth Listens conducts regular “study circles” on important local issues.

The study circles process works this way: The small group, consensus-based discussions of 8-12 people take place over a four-week period, meeting once a week. Then they produced a written report on their findings, which was published in the local paper, the Portsmouth Herald.

Portsmouth Listens began as a one-time effort to mobilize parents and students to deal with issues of bullying and violence in schools. Local attorney Jim Noucas and a group of citizens contacted the Study Circles Resource Center (now known as Everyday Democracy) to help put together a dialogue on the subject. More than 12 years later, the city is still using study circles for local dialogues, most recently, an extensive dialogue and report on the city’s budget challenges.

It was Portsmouth city manager John Bohenko’s idea to use the study circles process to review the city’s master plan, the document that guides policy on such issues as development, open space protection, affordable housing, transportation and infrastructure needs.

The master plan involved over 400 citizens over a period of two years. The process led to the development of a visioning statement and set of recommendations adopted by city government.

Portsmouth Listens has also held candidate forums using a dialogue-based roundtable to allow meaningful interaction between voters and candidates.

Portsmouth has a nine-member council with an average of 18 candidates running every two years. So the roundtables were divided into five groups of two or three and the voters into groups of 12-15. Each voter group was given 15 minutes to engage in a roundtable with the candidate groups. Each candidate was given three written questions and their answers are printed in the Herald. The questions were formulated by city officials, former council members and school board members.

Portsmouth Listens co-chair Jim Noucas says study circles have changed how the local government does business. The city is much more likely to consult the public on issues before evaluating the solutions, and the public is much more likely to support solutions that have been developed through deliberation. “It’s not just showing up and giving your opinion,” he says. “You have to be able to work with others, and people walk away with their opinions changed.”

The group is now working to organize a “New Hampshire Listens” to foster dialogue and deliberation on statewide issues and to get more communities in the state to conduct their own local study circles.

You can link here to read a longer article on Portsmouth Listens on the Everyday Democracy website.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.