NCW Libraries

Be the Change! gives you the tools and encouragement needed to be the change you wish to see in the world. From the popular founders of Hello!Lucky stationery, this guidebook offers instruction and guidance to spark creativity and inspire action in your local communities. First learn how to get inspired and how to inspire others, as well as the importance of embracing diverse perspectives and how to handle conflict diplomatically. Then discover how...

Award-winning director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) embarks on a journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if the solutions already available to improve our planet were embraced. Structured as a letter to his daughter, Gameau blends documentary with dramatized sequences and high-end visual effects to create a vision of how these solutions could regenerate the world.

"In Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up: Harnessing Real World Experience for Transformative Change, Anthony Flaccavento introduces readers to the innovators who are creating thriving, locally based economies and provides a road map for others who are interested in doing the same. He demonstrates that, despite the success of local initiatives like farmers' markets and clean energy cooperatives, true and lasting change of this type stalls...

"A tattoo parlor on Victoria Square? Some of the merchants get hot under the collar at the proposal, but could they be driven to kill to stop it? That's what the sheriff's office and Katie Bonner want to know when the building's owner is electrocuted with his own saw. Meanwhile, tensions rise when a hot chef takes over the square's tea shop. Will Katie have three men vying for her affections, or will her rival take the tea cake?"--Publisher description....

Providing concrete examples for citizens and government officials, Diers describes a successful program to support community self-help projects and a community-driven planning process that involved 30,000 people.

How can we unleash the innate potential of people, institutions and groups in communities to address our common challenges? And how can we do this by creating a civic culture in which people come together to shape their own lives and gain real hope?

The neighborhoods we live in impact our lives in so many ways: they determine who we know, what resources and opportunities we have access to, the quality of schools our kids go to, our sense of security and belonging, and even how long we live. Yet too many of us live in neighborhoods plagued by rising crime, school violence, family disintegration, addiction, alienation, and despair. Even the wealthiest neighborhoods are not immune; while poverty...

The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country's most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community. But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.