Cottage Grove neighbors are educating college students

Community residents Theresa Gregory and Sel Mpang and Community-Centered Health Coordinator Josie Williams introduce students from NC A&T State University, UNCG, Greensboro College, Elon University, and Guilford College to Cottage Grove with the absolute ground rule: the neighborhood decides. The rest of us can learn and can share but no outside organization or institution can impose what we want on the community.  Community-centered health means community led. Period.

And students are using what they learn to make enormous differences.

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Local Elections: Bringing Communities Together

My colleague Melody Warnick wrote an excellent post recently  about the unique role of local elections in communities. I was so pleased to read it, recognizing myself in the lady she writes about who comes huffing and puffing up her driveway to ask her to vote for her husband for sheriff.

My husband is running for a Town Board seat in the small town where we live. It’s a non-election year, so we’re expecting about 200 people to actually vote – a little under 10% of the town’s population. We’ve made a few yard signs, put out some postcard flyers, and set up an email account…but in small town elections, it’s the other, less professional engagement activities that make local elections so different and so fun.

That’s why I believe it’s important for more people – especially younger people – to rethink local government and how they can contribute. Continue Reading