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You’ll walk away from the experience with knowledge, confidence and hope – and the capacity to change your community; a new perspective on how real change occurs and your role in accelerating that change; a renewed connection to your aspirations and commitment to this work; and a network of colleagues – fellow travelers who share your aspirations for public life and their own communities.

During the lab, you’ll be asked to challenge the assumptions you have about your community and those you are trying to serve on a daily basis; align your work to your community’s “stage of community life;” identify your community’s “centers of strength;” and learn what it means to engage people as citizens instead of customers. For more information, or to sign up, click here.

Chuck Raasch, political reporter for Gannett News Service, sat down for a one-on-one interview with Richard C. Harwood to discuss the current state of public life and politics across the nation. The feature ran in Gannett papers across the country and can be found online by clicking here.

If you would like to learn more about the conditions facing our politics and public life, and how to find an alternate path toward the kind of nation we all seek, purchase a copy of Hope Unraveled: The People’s Retreat and Our Way Back for yourself or your organization. Chad Wick, CEO of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, praised Harwood’s latest book, saying, “Hope Unraveled speaks to the heart of all Americans. It is an urgent call to recapture authentic conversations and connections in all aspects of public life - from our communities, to our schools, to our politics."

Click here to order your copy from Amazon.com.

At the close of last year, the media was filled with front-page stories trumpeting the fact that charitable giving in the wake of Hurricane Katrina had surpassed giving following both the Asian Tsunami and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Yesterday, Harwood Institute President Richard C. Harwood shared his views on this news with law-makers and non-profit executives gathered for the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations Legislative Preview Session. “It confirms for me again,” said Harwood, “that Americans are a compassionate and generous people, and if they see a way to make a difference, they will act.”

But there is more to finding an alternate path than charity. Harwood continued, “Charity is necessary, but not sufficient to meet the challenges we face in our communities and across the nation. We need change. We need change to ensure that every child can get a good education, to ensure that every individual feels safe when he walks the streets of his community, and to fight hatred, bigotry and prejudice in our society.”

In nearly two decades of working in communities around the country, Harwood has seen first-hand what it takes to create change in communities from Flint, Michigan, to Las Vegas, Nevada. During his 15-city tour promoting his book Hope Unraveled last fall, he saw time and again that we need to focus on change, not simply charity.

Ironically, one such couragous example was herself named Katrina, known to those in her “Pittsburgh” neighborhood in Atlanta as Miss Trina. Miss Trina had originally been driven from her neighborhood by the noise and danger emanating from two crack houses on her block. She re-settled with her family in a middle class neighborhood removed from Pittsburgh in both geography and public conscious, but she could not shake the feeling that she had left others behind.

Not content to sit on the sidelines, Miss Trina moved back to a house near the old Pittsburgh neighborhood to confront the crack houses and hopelessness of the community head on. In her role with the Salvation Army, she is leading an effort to build a new neighborhood community center. Such a gathering space is a vital part of a community, but it will only be a force for change if people like Miss Trina devote themselves over the long run to using the community center as a catalyst for change. If such efforts are not undertaken, there would be only an empty shell of a building to show for the charity that went into its construction.

Unlike the ripples of hope generated by the work of Miss Trina, Hurricane Katrina left a path of destruction across the gulf coast region that will take years to rebuild. The charity is there, but the question remains, will there be change? Change will not be easy, and it will not be seen overnight. We must be ruthlessly strategic in our efforts, examining our own sensibilities and practices, and admitting that we must often change ourselves before we can create change in a community. Some questions to consider as we struggle to move forward:

• Will we be willing to confront the issues of poverty and race that caused so many people to be left behind as a great American city filled with toxic water?
• Will we invest in the kinds of individuals and organizations that can cut across class, race, and geography and generate the small signs of progress that foster authentic hope?
• Will we be willing to openly and honestly discuss the values and tradeoffs inherent in the difficult choices that must be made in the months and years ahead?

For all the uncertainty that we face as a nation, this is certain: If we are ever to recover from the effects of the Katrina of the Gulf Coast, we will need to look beyond charity and find stories of hope in the work of people like Miss Trina of Atlanta to create change.