Urban Development
Grow Your Own
Forget about luring big companies with tax incentives and subsidized space. Chris Gibbons focuses Littleton, Colorado's efforts on growing home-town businesses.
Tag: Employment
Understanding why people are out of work and innovative ways to provide them with jobs
Government
What’s Next: Fresh Faces at City Hall
To halt the greying of municipal government, the City Hall Fellows program offers recent college graduates a year-long stint working on everyday challenges such as transportation, public works, and housing.
Nonprofits
The Entrepreneurial Union
Freelance workers, whose numbers are growing, are left without health insurance, a retirement plan, or a work community. The Freelancers Union meets these needs.
Podcast
Environment
Laurie Marker - Environmental Sustainability for the Cheetah
The threat of animal habitat loss is one of the major issues in the environmental sustainability arena. In this audio interview by Sheela Sethuraman, Laurie Marker of the Cheetah Conservation Fund talks about a multi-pronged effort including habitat restoration, resource management education, and job creation to address that threat to cheetahs, in particular. She describes the creative measures she has taken to save cheetahs and improve the lives of the people who live near them.
Podcast
Civic Engagement
The Encore Careers Summit - Journeying Through Multiple Careers
The notion of "golden years" of endless leisure is giving way to a new form of practical idealism: real jobs tackling real problems and making real impact. The Encore Careers campaign aims to engage millions of baby boomers in careers later in life, producing a windfall of human talent to solve society's greatest problems. In this 2008 Encore Careers Summit panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford, panelists share their "encore" journeys, and how they've had the energy to stay professionally vital and active.
Podcast
Civic Engagement
The Encore Careers Summit - Lessons for a New Social Movement
How can the United States and the world benefit from the work of people who have been dedicated to social change over the last 30 years? What can those with the most diverse array of backgrounds and careers do to impact social, economic, and political policy, particularly in this unprecedented era of new political leadership? In this panel discussion from the 2008 Encore Careers Summit, activist leaders from the women's, civil rights, and environmental movements discuss how we can reinvent this country by drawing on lessons from the past.
Government
Romanticizing the Poor
Market solutions to poverty, which include services and products targeting consumers at the “bottom of the pyramid,” portray poor people as creative entrepreneurs and discerning consumers. Yet this rosy view of poverty-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful.
Nonprofits
Soup Kitchen Confidential
To share its expertise without jeopardizing its mission, FareStart spun out a new organization.
Podcast
Economic Development
Alejandro Toledo - Lifting Latin America Out of Poverty
Latin America may be poised to become a much bigger player on the world economic stage, yet 54 percent of its citizens would choose an autocratic regime over a democratically elected government if it meant more jobs. Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo reflects on the challenge of democratic development and consolidation in Latin America in this audio interview sponsored by the Stanford School of Education and moderated by Stanford sociology and political science professor, Larry Diamond.