All posts by Katie Lorah

4 ways to make crosswalks (better) in your neighborhood

Want to make more crosswalks on the streets in your neighborhood? Or make the ones you have better? Here’s a bit of background on what makes streets so great (and not so great) and how you can make crossing them easier, safer, and more fun where you live.

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How to grow community engagement for your sustainability project

If you’re a devoted sustainability planning or policy leader in the public sector today—particularly within a city or state government office or agency—you’ve probably asked yourself one or more of these questions:

  • How can we be sure we’re responding quickly and effectively to residents’ ideas and needs concerning environmental issues?
  • In our planning processes, how can we include the voices of residents in neighborhoods with long histories of disinvestment?
  • How can we expand and deepen our community engagement with a tight budget and scarce resources?

Well, we have a few ideas, courtesy of some outstanding ioby Leaders, projects, and friends:

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AWESOME PROJECT: Creating a multi-generational green space in Bagley, Detroit

Samoy Smith grew up in Detroit, with a Jamaica-born mother who wasn’t comfortable letting her venture far from the family’s tight-knit Jamaican community. It wasn’t until a school friend invited Smith to her church’s youth group one weekend, during middle school, that she really saw just how fulfilling it could be to build one’s own diverse “chosen family,” to accept invitations from neighbors and then extend them right back out to the next person.

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How to fundraise if you’re not a 501(c)3 nonprofit

If you’re a grassroots group that’s looking to get good done in your community, you might be wondering if your group needs to formally incorporate as a nonprofit organization before you can fundraise. Friends, we are here to tell you that the answer is a loud-and-proud: NOPE! 

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Three great youth music programs we love

Love music? Love working with young people? Interested in organizing a music program for youth in your community, but not sure what it could look like?

You’ve come to the right place. Over the years, we’ve worked with many leaders who have started creative initiatives in their communities that get young people involved in music, often in conjunction with something else engaging like the outdoors, visual arts, or technology. They’re all different,  but they all have some common threads (such as, we’ll just say it, being awesome).

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AWESOME PROJECT: A garden classroom and a space for possibility in Cleveland

Dawn Glasco, a Community Engagement Coordinator who works with children, has lived on East 76th street, Cleveland, for the past 10 years. And right outside her window, across the street from her home, all those years, had sat a large vacant lot — run down, overgrown with tall grass that the city wasn’t mowing, and littered with trash. A couple of years ago, Glasco started to feel ready to do something about it, summoned her courage, and began going door to door, asking neighbors if they’d join a group effort to beautify the street and turn the lot into an outdoor classroom. She also called the city, asked them to come and mow, and got permission to improve the lot. Glasco’s neighbors were receptive, and so was the city. For her, a door had opened.

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Hosting a Community Meeting? Avoid These 5 Mistakes!

Hey urban planners and city officials!

Are you working with a local community on a planning process? Hosting a public community meeting to gather input or feedback on a plan is a familiar part of the task. But if you’ve been doing this kind of work for a while, you’ve probably attended (or even, yikes, led) a community meeting that’s gone horribly wrong. There’s no worse feeling than being in front of a room full of angry people when you’re trying to build trust and work together to improve the community for everyone.

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AWESOME PROJECT: The Heights Line, Memphis

At a community meeting recently, in a Memphis neighborhood called The Heights, a white woman named Linda Burgess – a resident since the 70s – stood up and said that she’d had an answer to prayer. She’d seen her African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian friends and neighbors joining hands in service of their community. They were working together on the Heights Line project: a pop-up public green space on National Street, designed to bring people together and to connect the historically overlooked neighborhood to exciting nearby developments. “Linda said that we’ve been needing this in our community,” explains Jared Myers, Executive Director of The Heights Community Development Corporation (CDC).

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