How Can Communities Help their Residents Reconnect?

Pleased to have Maggie Woods report on the kick-off of a long-term effort on community reconnection. Maggie is a Policy and Program Manager at NC State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues.

Maggie:

North Carolinians are having increasing difficulty talking — and listening — to each other. That’s making it hard for us to get things done in our communities. And people want to find ways to fix that.

At least that’s what we heard, as my colleagues and I from NC State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues held “community conversations” across Western North Carolina this past summer.

From Buncombe to Clay to Wilkes counties — in coffee shops and at colleges — we met with 80 plus people to get their ideas about why it is so hard to connect to each other and how we can do better.

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Citizens’ Academies: Low-cost, High-impact Community Engagement

The City of Concord has one of the longest-running citizens’ academies in North Carolina, or even the United States, in its Concord 101 program, which has completed 16 sessions and reached over 300 participants. Since inception, the program has largely maintained the original format, yet adapted to expand both the content covered and the number of participants involved each year. Continue Reading

The Last Mile: Building Better Access in North Carolina to Enhance Civic Participation

In December, my colleague here at CELE, Brian Bowman, wrote an excellent piece about how technology can help make government more transparent and accessible. With data from the Pew Research Center, he then explored how often citizens are able to access government information on the Internet – and the many underserved groups who don’t yet receive the full benefits of technology (including older people, non-English speakers, and colorblind individuals).

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