I'm doing a workshop on Wednesday with Dave Weed of Healthy City Fall River at the Southeastern Mass. Civic Engagement Summit, a regional event at UMass Dartmouth, inspired in part by the statewide Civic Engagement Summit SCI and many other groups put together during the fall of 2007.  Now that http://myfallriver.org, one of our new network community websites is up in running, we find ourselves in Southeastern Mass. quite a bit.  You can learn more about the event here:  http://www.umassd.edu/engage/cce/summit.cfm

Thursday evening, I'll be joining a panel & community dialogue session on Social Change hosted by the New Prosperity Initiative at the Boston Public Library.  Should be an interesting conversation, feel free to join us!  Details in the attached press release.

Tom Sander does a nice job on his Social Capital Blog articulating the significance of Tuesday’s election for those of us focused on social capital and civic engagement. He notes that after reaching all time lows a decade ago, voter turnout approached, and perhaps surpassed, the all time highs.

Clearly there are signs the tide is starting to turn on civic engagement, with the significant youth vote being especially heartening for me. Motivated by what at the time was low youth interest in politics and other forms of participation beyond volunteering, the Youth Council was the first program we established when we started SCI seven years ago. One of my favorite Youth Council projects is the one where the youth facilitate debates among candidates for local office at the local high school.  read more »