New Paper Finds Most Change in Communities Comes From Local Opportunity
October 11 2011( Harwood Online )
Solutions to the
challenges we face don’t yet exist and
planning alone won’t get us there. In
communities, states and the nation we need a
different mindset – one of
innovation.
The Aspen Institute’s newest white
paper, implementing the Knight Commission’s
recommendations, calls on America’s
community members and leaders to adopt a set of
useful strategies to assess the health of civic
resources and infrastructure, to build up local
news and information environments, and create
engaged communities with the capacity and
resilience to meet today’s—and
tomorrow’s–most pressing
challenges.
In the paper, Assessing Community
Information Needs: A Practical Guide, Richard
C. Harwood urges citizens and community leaders
to go beyond “simply doing good planning”
to develop a mindset and practice of innovation
and Turning Outward toward the community in
order to take effective action to solve common
challenges. Harwood is the founder of The
Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, an
organization recognized for their approach to
breaking down barriers and empowering people to
make real progress in improving their
communities.
“In reality, most change in
communities occurs through pockets of activity
that emerge and take root over time,” notes
Harwood. “These pockets result from
individuals, small groups, and various
organizations seeing an opportunity for change
and seizing it, often through trial and error.
Seldom are the collection of such pockets
orchestrated through a top-down, linear plan;
instead, they happen when people and groups
start to engage and
interact.”
The Turn Outward approach allows
community members to focus on relevance,
re-building and re-engaging with each other as
well as the schools, businesses and other
organizations that contribute to the health and
stability of a community. Harwood’s paper
gives people actionable steps and support
around what it takes to act on what matters
most.
Assessing Community Information Needs:
A Practical Guide will be featured Monday, October 17th from 12:30
to 3pm ET in a roundtable discussion among
a select group of leaders, innovators,
advocates and critics from the national, state
and local levels at the Aspen Institute in
Washington, D.C.
We invite you to watch it live with us
here and use hashtag
#Harwood to discuss themes and
findings.
Media who are interested in attending
should contact Erin Silliman for details at
erin.silliman@aspeninstitute.org or
202.736.5818. The paper will also be
released and available at www.knightcomm.org on
Monday, October 17.
Assessing Community Information Needs:
A Practical Guide is the eighth in a series of
white papers focused on implementing the 15
recommendations of the Knight Commission in its
landmark 2009 report, Informing Communities –
Information Needs of Communities in a
Democracy. The Knight Commission is a project
of the Aspen Institute Communications and
Society Program and the John S. and James L.
Knight Foundation -please
visitwww.knightcomm.org for more
information.
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