I'd like to take a minute to get to know the community I have lived in for over 15 years. Though I've spent a lot of time working, learning, and playing here, and being immersed in many aspects of this community, it's hard to see the 'larger picture' working with just this group or that.
Communities In Action, our volunteer program, serves non-profits in Wake County, and connects individuals living in or near Wake County to these causes. So, here are some facts I found about the communities we're working in and for:
Wake County was founded in 1771, includes 64 zip codes, and currently takes up about 857 square miles in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. We are home to the state's capital, Raleigh - where I personally do most of my activities.
The Wake County population as of 2007 was 823,345. Almost half of this population lives in Raleigh. We are growing every day; this year, an estimated 86 newcomers arrive in Wake County daily to start lives here. We have 153 public schools, with 134,002 students enrolled in schools.
The median household income in Wake County was about $60,903 in 2006; not too shabby. However, there are a couple thousand individuals estimated to be wandering our community streets without homes; 1,706 of these individuals were actually visually counted in 2006 by volunteers. These individuals are men, women, kids, victims of domestic violence, mentally ill, or in some cases, full-time employees who simply can't make ends meet. We also have thousands of homeless and stray animals and pets, over 5,000 of whom had to be euthanized in 2007 because there was nowhere for them to go. There is hope, if our community can work together: Raleigh has adopted the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness, and we have a functioning SPCA as well as adoption and foster-care pet networks that try to help as many animals as they can.
Our county-wide unemployment rate is about 3.5%, which doesn't sound too bad. However, currently, 9.1% of the Wake County population, or about 69,224 people are living under the poverty line here. In 2006, over 20,000 of these people were under 17 years old (about 11% of the local population of children). I've heard that the cause of homelessness here or in other cities is a lack of affordable housing. Poverty doesn't help the hunger situation. What was really unfortunate was learning that in the year 2000, 115,000 TONS of food were thrown away in Wake County. I was unable to find the statistic for 2007/2008.
We are fortunate as a community to have recycling, following nation-wide trends. In 1989, the city of Raleigh began its recycling program, "Raleigh Recycling", which made curbside recycling available to 101,545 households. We have a database that lists where you can recycle or get rid of pretty much any piece of junk you have in more environmentally friendly ways, from furniture, to food you don't want to eat, to eyeglasses. However, more can be done, as I can attest to personally; only in the past month was I able to convince my Cary-based apartment complex to start a recycling program to serve over 180 households there. It wouldn't surprise me if several other townhomes and apartment complexes did not yet have recycling in place. North Carolina also does not have a "Bottle Bill" yet, or a law that would enable us citizens to collect and drop off our cans and bottles and receive some spare change back. Fortunately, a local group is campaigning to make this happen.
On the environmental note, I was surprised to find that registered vehicles on Wake County roads in 2007 numbered 706,000. And that 85.6% of drivers drive alone to and fro. Only 10.7% of drivers carpool. 1.3% use public transportation, and 1.4% walk. Others worked from home.
My goal is not to paint a bleak picture of my home. I love this place and there are many great aspects to it - like the people. There are currently 4,929 registered non-profit organizations working to make things better in Wake County, and an estimated 175,000+ volunteers. But because I love this place, I know that lot more can be done, and that we're worth it.
In the next few weeks I'm going to start compiling a list of all my "ideas". It will be like a Community Chest of ideas for social action projects. My hope is that I - or one of you! - will be able to tackle each one of these projects at some point. The question I'll be asking myself is: What does an ideal community look like to me? What does it look like to you?
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Can Business Save The World?
I get these daily emails from a group called Charity Focus called "Daily Good" emails. They have stories and news articles across a wide spectrum of topics, but all of them fit the theme of some kind of "good" in the world. Some of the articles tend to catch my eye over others.
This morning I opened my email box to see today's Daily Good topic: "How Business can save the world". In a society that focuses so much on 'business' at times, it's difficult to see how it can be used as a tool or a means to accomplish widespread social change, especially when many businesses may not view this as their primary goal.
The article focuses on the concept of "worker empowerment" and how empowered workers are more capable of resolving both personal and community conflicts. The purveyor of this idea was an author named Gretchen Spreitzer. She analyzed data collected over a 20 year period from 1981 to 2001 from employee workplaces in 65 countries across the world, asking questions about the amount of freedom and power they had to make decisions in their offices. She found that countries with workplaces reporting lower levels of freedom and power in decision-making had higher levels of civil unrest, and that as workplace satisfaction improved, indications of better civic life increased.
It's a bit hard to prove by itself because you can't know what other factors have played into the increased happiness in civic life or the worsened civil unrest. The article itself points out the difficulty in verifying this idea, and poses additional questions:
"Do participatory management practices result in open societies, or are the businesses that use them simply more abundant in healthy, peaceable communities? And do positive changes in society reflect enlightened business practice or the impact of politically motivated changes induced by organized labor and other social movements?"
And as is the case, I believe, in many organizations, it's far easier to learn and hone positive conflict-resolution and community building skills when your leader fosters these things. The article ends on a less optimistic note, lamenting that it may be far more difficult to get CEOs to "practice virtue in factory and community" than workers themselves.
The use of business-like practices and models has dramatically risen in the charitable sector in the past decade and spawned the use of new terms such as "social enterprise". So we can argue that business has altered the world for the better by providing new, innovative, effective ways to create social change. And I personally can agree that there are benefits of "empowering" people - in workplaces and in the community - to take charge and make things better. The questions I would ask are: What other ways can businesses be/become the bearers of positive community and social changes? What internal/structural changes would need to be made within businesses to make them model institutions? And what external things - what ways that our society and culture currently functions - would need to change to be accepting of a newer, more philanthropic corporate citizen?
This morning I opened my email box to see today's Daily Good topic: "How Business can save the world". In a society that focuses so much on 'business' at times, it's difficult to see how it can be used as a tool or a means to accomplish widespread social change, especially when many businesses may not view this as their primary goal.
The article focuses on the concept of "worker empowerment" and how empowered workers are more capable of resolving both personal and community conflicts. The purveyor of this idea was an author named Gretchen Spreitzer. She analyzed data collected over a 20 year period from 1981 to 2001 from employee workplaces in 65 countries across the world, asking questions about the amount of freedom and power they had to make decisions in their offices. She found that countries with workplaces reporting lower levels of freedom and power in decision-making had higher levels of civil unrest, and that as workplace satisfaction improved, indications of better civic life increased.
It's a bit hard to prove by itself because you can't know what other factors have played into the increased happiness in civic life or the worsened civil unrest. The article itself points out the difficulty in verifying this idea, and poses additional questions:
"Do participatory management practices result in open societies, or are the businesses that use them simply more abundant in healthy, peaceable communities? And do positive changes in society reflect enlightened business practice or the impact of politically motivated changes induced by organized labor and other social movements?"
And as is the case, I believe, in many organizations, it's far easier to learn and hone positive conflict-resolution and community building skills when your leader fosters these things. The article ends on a less optimistic note, lamenting that it may be far more difficult to get CEOs to "practice virtue in factory and community" than workers themselves.
The use of business-like practices and models has dramatically risen in the charitable sector in the past decade and spawned the use of new terms such as "social enterprise". So we can argue that business has altered the world for the better by providing new, innovative, effective ways to create social change. And I personally can agree that there are benefits of "empowering" people - in workplaces and in the community - to take charge and make things better. The questions I would ask are: What other ways can businesses be/become the bearers of positive community and social changes? What internal/structural changes would need to be made within businesses to make them model institutions? And what external things - what ways that our society and culture currently functions - would need to change to be accepting of a newer, more philanthropic corporate citizen?
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