Smart Communities

Miscellany - Part One

The Nonprofit Times reports that “Confusing U.S. Postal Service (USPS) regulations and the emerging popularity of email are two of the reasons experts gave for a drop in the amount of snail mail that charities sent out during the Oct. 1, 2003 to Sept. 30, 2004 fiscal year.”

Vocational Education and Strong Communities

If you’ve read Smart Communities then you’ll recognize the source of my concern for high school dropout rates.  In Smart Communities I highlight two locales – Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Dallas, Texas – which are working hard (and successfully!) to keep their kids in school and committed to learning.  This is a serious problem that demands effective solutions.  According to data from the last census, roughly 10% of all 16 to 19-year-old school children dropped out of school in the year 2000.  While there are a number of ways to measure dropout there are data from two reliable sources, a Census 2000 Brief on School Enrollment and a National Center for Education Statistics report.

Over the years, vocational education has been an attractive option for high school students who don’t plan on getting a college education.  Most of the time the skills learned in vocational education help students get jobs that earn higher wages than a typical high school diploma would yield.  This is a powerful incentive for many teens to remain in school until they’ve received their diploma.

Unfortunately, there is conflicting evidence about the health of the vocational education community.  The Chronicle of Philanthropy (January 5, pp.23) published an article which notes a fourfold increase in the number of charitable organizations providing vocational education.  At the other end of the spectrum is a Washington Post article from January 9 which indicates that students graduating with a degree in vocational education fell from more than 33% of high school graduates in 1982 to about 25% in 1998.  More recently, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that federal funding for vocational education may be cut because the Bush administration believes it "doesn't work."

At the heart of the debate is an image problem – these articles indicate vocational education gets a bad rap as catering to less bright, capable or innovative thinkers.  This is absolutely not the case; vocational education is one of those solutions that can create smarter communities composed of citizens who recognize the value of a range of educational opportunities.  Check out these articles to understand the strong arguments in favor of vocational education and how it can help strengthen your community.

Priorities

A recent article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy (January 6, pp. 6+) documented the growing number of charitable organizations and asks the question, ‘Are 800,000 charities too many to serve society, or not enough?’  Among these 800,000 are a rising number of new organizations including 35,000 religious and more than 30,000 educational organizations formed from 1999-2003.  One of the results of the rising tide of charitable aid has been an increase in competition for donations, this competition has forced fund raisers to adopt more aggressive tactics which may discourage individuals from donating to any charitable cause.

A much more serious problem, from the Pew Partnership’s point of view, is that there is a wide discrepancy between the attitudes of those in the nonprofit sector and individuals in their communities.  The leadership of nonprofit groups overwhelmingly believes that money is the most effective way to serve their cause while the public places greater emphasis on volunteerism and cooperation to achieve improvement on issues of importance to their community.  In a Pew Partnership survey released in May 2003 (What Will It Take?) we asked nonprofit executives and the general public to choose five actions which would do the most to potentially improve life in their communities.

Nonprofit Executives

Increased monetary donations (39%)
Increased volunteering (17%)
Collaboration with business leaders (13%)
Collaboration with government officials (11%)
Greater visibility in the community (11%)

General Public
Increased cooperation in problem-solving (40%)
Increased volunteerism (27%)
Increased voter participation (14%)
Increased donations of food and clothing (11%)
Increased monetary donations to charities (8%)

While the article from the Chronicle importantly points to some emerging problems in the charitable sector it is important to keep in mind that there is a major disconnect between the perceptions of nonprofit executives and the general public.  It may be that nonprofits need to do a better job of convincing the public that their mission and priorities are, indeed, the ones that are tested, effective and can only be served through greater donations.  But nonprofits need to go beyond operational transparency, they need to actively promote their approach as the best one and be able to make strong, substantive arguments to the general public about why their approach is best suited to a particular problem or community … and prove it.

New Avenues for Youth Participation

The latest generation of young people is participating in politics through nontraditional means.  Instead of using the blunt instrument of the ballot box America’s youth are increasingly using their purchasing power to make political statements.  The ability to act on personal political and ethnical beliefs has empowered a new generation of civic activists.  As one young person told the The Seattle Times, “I guess I see it as being in some ways more powerful than voting … To me, it’s a more direct, active way to promote what you believe in.”

Many, including the folks at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), see this as a positive sign.  Young people already volunteer in large numbers and it is hoped that the issue advocacy expressed by young people ultimately affects other forms of participation, like voting and contacting public officials.

A note for those of you who are statistically-minded.  The CIRCLE website now offers you the ability to manipulate their datasets online using a statistics program named SDA.  Don't allow yourself to be intimidated by this introduction to CIRCLE's research, there is a tutorial provided which does a good job of explaining how to use the program.

New Pew Partnership Web Design

The Pew Partnership for Civic Change has a new web design and new text which better reflects our commitment to helping communities solve tough civic issues.

Among the changes to the website is a new timeline which details the history of the Pew Partnership including some of our publications and initiatives as well as some of the awards we've given and received.  If you are interested, this is a great way to understand our organizational evolution.

For those of you who want to learn from our efforts there is a resources page with some of our more well-known publications in PDF.  This is not a comprehensive list of the Pew Partnership's work but it is representative sampling of our most-requested work.

Further in the future we will have an online bulletin board through which we'll distribute all our past publications as well as additional material like our leadership listservs and related new publications.

Safe Neighborhoods

The safety of our communities is a pressing issue, especially in urban areas.  High crime is obviously a hindrance to economic development and can depress civic engagement merely by making people afraid to step from their homes.  Sometimes there are effects you wouldn’t expect, a January 2, 2005 New York Times magazine article indicated that unsafe neighborhoods are a contributing factor in the rising obesity among Mexican-American children in Starr County, Texas.  Parents will refuse to allow their children to play outside in unsafe neighborhoods so that while the children are safe, they are also locked into a sedentary lifestyle within their homes.  Of course this is just one example but it does demonstrate how unexpected effects can arise from seemingly ‘simple’ problems like crime in a community.

There is reason to hope as murder rates decline in many U.S. cities.  The Christian Science Monitor explores why but includes comments from some citizens which indicate that even though the murder rate has declined they still feel unsafe in their neighborhoods:

If you’re interested in effecting change in your community then you might want to explore Solutions for America, a website developed by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change.  The website is filled with resources related to a number of pressing community issues including healthy families and children, thriving neighborhoods, living wage jobs and viable economies.  One of our issue area webpages is dedicated to neighborhood crime prevention and safety and includes lists of what works, what doesn’t and websites where publications can be downloaded or ordered.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the Smart Communities Blog.  My name is Suzanne Morse and I am the president of the Pew Partnership.

Almost a year ago we decided to put together a weblog in order to take the work being done on community development issues, chop it down to bite-sized pieces, and make it readily accessible to a larger audience.  We hope to include in our audience concerned citizens, nonprofit executives, academics, and practitioners in the field.  Below each entry is a link for comments (conveniently labeled ‘Comment’) and I invite you to add your thoughts and ideas to this dialogue.

The field of community development is vast and so are the numbers of people involved in research and practice - we have a lot of ground to cover.  Luckily this format allows us an opportunity to reach out to others in the field and make use of their experience and expertise. We’re looking forward to sharing materials and comments and we hope you will do the same.

If you have questions about this blog or suggestions for future posts please write us at [email protected].