Common Focus

It started with a person paying attention to a hungry cat and now Piper has people talking to each other. Now that is community building.

Beltline Cat: "Stay Frisky My Friends" | 11alive.com The Beltline's Eastside Trail is the kind a place where a man can landsurf with a pair of small dogs in tow and cause nary a stir.

Interesting HuffPost look at how public participation is linked to higher levels of employment. The text, as opposed to the video, is about meetings that were in a partnership with Everyday Democracy. My colleague Janee and I led their facilitator training and their action training. The meetings are part of the Neighbor for Neighbor project, coordinated by Missouri State University and the Community Partnership of the Ozarks in an effort to foster what the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) calls "civic health."

New Study Shows Why Your Community May Be More Susceptible To Unemployment During the day, classrooms at Weller Elementary School in Springfield, Mo., are filled with students, teachers and the usual abundance of youthful energy and enthusiasm. But on Tuesday and Friday nights, a different kind of energy fuels the hopeful ambiance.