Helping communities Work

This website is a focus group tool intended to stimulate discussion and collaboration.

Helping Communities Work is an asset-based community development strategy designed by a coalition of philanthropic, education, academic, journalist and civic entrepreneurs. The plan celebrates the differences among us by supporting neurodiversity and advancing diversity, equity and inclusion as central community assets and catalysts for change. The process is designed to support all students, including lifelong and family learners, through education to employment and technology transfer programs in K-12 and higher education institutions with a unified focus on community schools, community colleges and four-year institutions.

Helping Communities Work harnesses the power of the pen through solutions and entrepreneurial journalism, open source software, digital product management, branded content and open educational resources. The plan also promotes several of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which were unanimously adopted in 2015 by the 193 Member States of the United Nations. Helping Communities Work leverages human, financial and social capital to preserve and enhance natural capital. The plan takes a holistic approach to community reinvestment, public funding, trust-based philanthropy, place-based impact investing and other forms of cross-sector capital. 

Helping Communities Work also promotes intergenerational community health, wellness and fitness with a focus on healthy food, proper nutrition, exercise innovation and other "Whole Child" services. The objective is to identify diverse societal problems, help to create large-scale and sustainable community solutions and objectively report on the outcomes with evidence-based data. The plan proposes a more holistic and productive continuum of education, human capital, workforce, small business, community and economic development.