Harwood receives warm 'welcome back' in Youngstown
Monday, May 8, 2006
(The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation)Last week, Rich Harwood was in Youngstown,
Ohio, where The Harwood Institute conducted a
public capital study in 1999 gauging the civic
strength of the community.
At that time,
Youngstown was mired in what the Institute
calls "The Waiting Place" - one of the five
stages of community life, where people are
unsure how to move forward and are simply
"waiting" for someone - or something -
to rescue them. The Waiting Place is often
characterized by a "felt unknown" - a sense
people have that something is wrong, but they
can't quite put their finger on it.
Rich was back in town to speak to a
community development group and meet with some
of our on-the-ground partners in some previous
work. What we found was not a city in waiting,
but a city of energized citizens who have
thrown up their hands and said, "enough is
enough!"
During his two-day trip, Rich
spoke on Thursday night to more than 300
residents at the annual community dinner for Wick Neighbors, Inc., about
findings from his recent book, Hope
Unraveled: The People's Retreat and Our Way
Back (Kettering Foundation Press, 2005).
Wick Neighbors is working to restore the
historic Smoky Hollow district of Youngstown.
According to Margaret Murphy, executive
director of Wick Neighbors, the organization
has been using the Institute's 1999 report,
titled Waiting for the Future, to guide
their efforts over the past three years since
their inception.
On Friday, Rich sat in
on a National Issues Forum, convened
by the Mahoning Valley Vision for
Education. The forum was based on a
discussion guide titled Democracy's
Challenge: Reclaiming the Public's Role,
published by the Kettering
Foundation. The discussion guide is based
in part on Rich's findings in Hope
Unraveled.
The Mahoning Valley Vision for
Education (MVVE) received training from The
Harwood Institute several years ago as part of
a partnership with the Cincinnati-based
KnowledgeWorks Foundation. As a result, MVVE
has become a "home for engagement" in the
Mahoning Valley and is not only seen around the
community as an authentic convenor for citizens
interested in solving public problems, but is
also an advocate in the community for using
civic engagement to help people reengage in
public life.
According to Roger Smith,
communications director for Wick Neighbors, The
Harwood Institute's interventions in Youngstown
were "a watershed moment" for the city and have
helped it move out of a gradual decline that
started in the 1970s and continued through the
early 2000s.
At Thursday night's
dinner, Rich announced to an enthusiastic crowd
that it was time to rip the cover off of the
Institute's 1999 Youngstown report and place it
with a new one that says, "Youngstown: A City
on the Go."
For more information, check
out a two-part interview with Rich
for WYTV-ABC News in Youngstown. You can also
read about the Institute's work in an article
published by the Youngstown newspaper The
Vindicator, which is available
here as a pdf.
Look for more
stories of Youngstown's exciting re-birth in
coming weeks.