Thinking and Acting Globally and Locally: Minnesota's Cities and Our Quality of Life

“ 'The world isn’t flat,' writes Edward Glaeser, 'it’s paved.' At any rate, most of the places where people prefer to dwell are paved. More than half of humanity now lives in cities... "

So begins a review of a new book about cities.*

Cities have, for thousands of years, constituted for us humans major centers for the production of goods and services, for commerce and finance, and for the development of human thought through institutions of learning and through media. Not to mention the opportunities which cities have offered for cultural amalgamation – the blending of traditions, beliefs, political views – and for the appreciation of many fine and exotic foods!

Despite globalization, what happens in our immediate communities often matters the most to people. And it should – as long as we continually view local events in the larger contexts of our region, our state, our nation, our world. “Think globally, act locally.” has become almost banal. However, let’s not discard it. Let’s revise that expression in a way to inspire us to realize that, in this globalized world, we need to think both locally and globally and to act both locally and globally. What we do in our locality affects others throughout the world; what others do in their localities affects us – not just in the short term, but in the long term as well.

What trends are most important right now, in Minneapolis, or Burnsville, or Duluth, or Moorhead, or Owatonna? Perhaps the employment rate? What about the poverty rate? Or the crime rate? It’s a trick question, of course. All have importance for the future of our population. We must address each, and our approach must include local, national, and global action.

How do the various levels, from local to global, interact? And what difference does it make, if we want to improve our quality of life?

Take the environment, for example. If we don’t address global warming – a remote, hard-to-understand concept for most of us – life will become so difficult and hard to manage on the local level that none of our efforts to improve our communities socially and economically will have any chance of success. (We may not find ourselves in the position of The Maldives, a nation with a high probability of disappearing during the next 100 years, due to rising sea levels, but our situation will differ radically from the present because of climate changes local and global.) So, local decisions to build up (in cities), not out (in suburbs and rural areas), for example, can, if wisely made, help both to improve local housing conditions and to ameliorate adverse climate conditions in the long term.

For one more, take jobs. Our best-laid plans for local jobs development will reach a futile end, if our country does not resolve its debt crisis. That does not simply mean making a decision about the debt ceiling. It means the creation of a new consciousness among elected officials nationally regarding how we move forward with entitlement programs, defense spending, and the government bureaucracy. Without that consciousness, along with a new framework for government spending, the currently leaking ship, which is the U.S. national economy, will sink. Quality of life indicators will sink as well.

The issue of raising taxes and/or cutting spending is a discussion for another time. Regardless of what we do, we must nurture local investment and entrepreneurial talent while simultaneously creating national and global policies and conditions that will enable local enterprise to succeed. Thinking and acting globally and locally.

Our Minnesota Compass quality-of-life project now tracks trends at the state, region, county levels, and when possible, at the city-level (populations of 20,000+). Those of us who want to push for local progress can use Compass to examine trends at all levels. To view geographic profiles, go to mncompass.org and click on your region of the map.

* Review in The Economist, February 10, 2011, of the book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier. By Edward Glaeser.

Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood Moving Forward

Hard work by hundreds of people, has brought our Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood planning close to the finish line. Now, an announcement by the U.S. Department of Education offers us the opportunity to apply for funding that will enable us to substantially boost our efforts to implement that plan and fulfill our dream to organize an effective network of partners who will work in concert to ensure that every Promise Neighborhood child thrives from cradle to career.

The 250 block Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood has more than 20,000 residents; about 7,200 are children. About half of the households with children have annual incomes of less than $18,000 per year. Among children in grades 3 through 10, about 40 percent perform at grade level in English and math. Just 58 percent of Promise Neighborhood children graduate on time from high school. So, it’s a good place to work to increase educational achievement, although not just because it has plenty of room for improvement. The Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood has many residents who are committed to the success of the neighborhood’s children and who appreciate the advantages of a diverse, centrally-located urban neighborhood, for raising children.

Most parents in the Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood believe that their children can receive a quality education in the Saint Paul Public Schools. Four out of five feel that their child is safe at school and in getting to and from school. However, about half of parents feel that they lack enough information about out-of-school-time opportunities and about opportunities for post-secondary education for their children. Many do not spend the recommended amount of time reading with their elementary-aged child; they need to figure out how to do so.

Those are just a few tidbits of the volume of information we gathered about the Promise Neighborhood. They illustrate the definite need in the neighborhood, to improve academic performance, but also the confidence, interest, and strength of parents who want to promote academic success, but need information or assistance to accomplish that.

As we move forward, Wilder is honored to serve for the first two to three years as the sponsoring organization for the initiative, at the request of the Promise Neighborhood Advisory Board. The planning year has included active collaboration among the City of Saint Paul, Ramsey County, the Saint Paul Public Schools, the YWCA, the Saint Paul Public Schools Foundation, the Frogtown Neighborhood Association, and the Children’s Collaborative. In the past couple of weeks, more than 30 groups and organizations have expressed a strong interest in joining the collaboration. That number will grow. This offers us a wonderful opportunity to make progress, and to build a continuum of support and encouragement for children from birth to college and beyond.

What are some hallmarks of this planning year? I would note two which make me proud.

We can be proud of the community participation which this year included. Two resident committees began their work in August of 2010, to help with project design. An Advisory Board, which includes neighborhood residents and the leaders of the City of Saint Paul, Ramsey County, and Saint Paul Public Schools met monthly, to oversee the project, and will meet weekly in August to complete our new proposal to the federal government. The community survey ensured that we had a comprehensive picture of the neighborhood’s children and their families – from parents’ own points of view. Two, large community meetings have also offered residents the opportunity to provide input. Our Solution Action Groups – six task forces of residents and providers who considered all the possibilities for effectively reaching children, to serve them and their families – have finished their work. They have made recommendations which will guide further Promise Neighborhood efforts in the neighborhood.

We can also be proud of the great data we produced, to enable residents and policy makers to understand the neighborhood. The community survey conducted by Wilder Research provided a scientifically valid sampling of parents in the neighborhood, including interviews with both English and non-English speaking parents. Many cities do not have the capacity to gather such rich information.. In addition, our work this year put a new system in place to track the results of the Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood – so we know whether we make progress.

Thanks for your interest. Stay tuned – and join us, if you can!

Preschool - More Evidence of Benefits

Preschool – it has very positive effects, not just for children, but for all of us.

Newly released research has documented the long term effects of preschool involvement. Let’s keep this in mind, as we work to improve our communities, build the capacity of our workforce, and overcome significant challenges to effective education of our young people of today.

A research team, headed locally by Professor Arthur Reynolds at the University of Minnesota delivered more results from a long-term study of preschool children in Chicago. They reported on indicators of well-being up to 25 years after preschool attendance for more than 1400 study participants. Evidence established a link between preschool attendance and: higher educational attainment; higher income; better socioeconomic status; and increased health insurance coverage, as well as lower rates of justice-system involvement and less substance abuse.

This work adds to a body of research evidence that suggests the value of preschool for promoting educational attainment and improving social development among young people. It also offers evidence of the cost/benefit of preschool. As the Pioneer Press reported, “The average cost per child for 18 months of preschool is $9,000, but Reynolds’ cost-benefit analysis suggests that leads to at least $90,000 in benefits per child…”

Unfortunately, at present, nothing ensures that all children will take part in preschool education, and even if they do, nothing ensures that it will have the necessary quality to produce the strong effects noted in the research.

At Wilder Research, we have a number of initiatives addressing early childhood; we work in collaboration with many colleagues who want to promote the use of the most effective (and cost/beneficial) approaches to improving the early education of young children. We hope that our work will increase awareness and help to guide policy choices that will promote high quality early education. Even if we can’t increase resources for our youngest community members, we can use those resources in ways that will maximize positive impacts.

Our insightful friend, the economist Art Rolnick, has noted that investment in human capital must occur in order for economic development to occur, and that high quality preschool education may perhaps constitute the most impactful investment in human capital that we can make.

Stay in touch; let me know your thoughts….

Nonprofit Organizations and Innovation

Nonprofit organizations have a high proportion of “disenfranchised” staff – according to research by Forrester Research, reported in the book, Empowered by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler. Conversely, nonprofits rank low on staff who feel “empowered” and “act resourceful.”As a result, they do not extend boundaries to create and promote new ways of doing things; they do not innovate. Their ability to transform operations to produce greater community impact is close to nil.

Their study looked at “information workers” – anyone who uses a computer – which, in most nonprofits, constitutes the majority of staff, and virtually all staff in key positions related to management and to customer (client) service.

These findings, along with the assertions by Bernoff and Schadler, should trouble us at a time when we, in the public and nonprofit sectors, feel pressured to create new solutions that will enable us to do more with less. Most of us would like to see an increase in fruitful innovation in nonprofits. Bernoff and Schadler would contend that, to increase innovation, we must create more organizational HEROes – highly empowered and resourceful operatives. These are staff who can move an organization forward, meeting the mission, increasing the effectiveness of services for the people served, and enlarging the impact of the organization in its community. To suggest how the thinking of these authors might increase the number of nonprofit HEROes, I would highlight a few principles:

1. Fail frequently. With more than 30 years of experience working in nonprofit organizations, I know that, on average, nonprofits have an overwhelming fear of failure. Nonprofit leaders typically suspect that to fail at something means they will lose grant funds or lose donors or lose clients or trigger a compliance audit – or, if nothing else, that failure will hurt someone’s feelings. Yet successful businesses – and successful nonprofits (as, for example, the Harlem Children’s Zone appears to be so far) – acknowledge, accept, and learn from failure. They will describe it, sometimes joke about it, and use it to inspire further searching for effective innovation. Failing nurtures growing; failure to fail stunts growth.

2. Transform IT departments and other corporate and central administrative departments from NO- sayers into valued coaches and supporters of innovation. Organizations where front-line staff are encouraged to “do it themselves” and where staff have the autonomy to create their own solutions – Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation stands as one of the best examples – develop an adaptive advantage for serving customers and growing.

3. Make certain that management culture truly supports innovation that increases community impact. Virtually all nonprofit managers state that they want innovation. Some nurture creativity that leads to better services and better outcomes. However, despite good intentions and statements supportive of change, managers’ behaviors frequently do not reinforce innovation. Managerial bureaucracies can create so many levels of review that staff become disillusioned about trying to suggest a new idea. Managers sometimes place risk above all other considerations when presented with a new idea – which inevitably leads to rejecting many great ideas, because all great new ideas have a large amount of risk.

4. Celebrate attempts at innovation, no matter what their level of success. People need to feel encouraged for bringing up new approaches. Some new ideas will make a huge difference in operations and results; others will make only a tiny difference. Some, as we noted, will fail. Regardless, people have put time and energy into creating them. Occasionally, they have placed their reputations on the line. If we want staff to return with more ideas, we must reinforce their enthusiasm for improvement.

The authors note the difficulty of installing principles such as these in organizations. Enabling employees to do things on their own can seem unnatural; it can feel “like a virus invading the body.” However, not to support such empowerment can greatly limit an organization’s capacity to achieve what it has the mission to achieve.

Increasingly, the solutions to the issues faced in our communities require collaboration among individuals and organizations. Increasingly, the solutions require engagement with community members, joint problem-solving, and the creation of new approaches for community improvement. Nonprofit staff who engage with others must be HEROes, “highly empowered and resourceful operatives.” They must understand the needs, aspirations, and cultures of those with whom they work. They must be able to imagine, create, think on their feet, and make decisions on the fly, with the knowledge that their organizations will support them.

Can we move nonprofit staff from “disenfranchised” to “empowered and resourceful”? I certainly want to support such an effort.

Obesity - A Trend We Should, and Can, Reverse

Imagine: You want to maintain a healthy diet, but you don’t have convenient access to grocery stores that provide a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, or you live and work where it is far easier to eat high calorie, high fat foods than to eat more nutritious alternatives. Regardless of your good intentions, you may gain weight, increase your blood pressure, develop diabetes, and die a premature death. That’s how social, economic, and other environmental factors influence your health.

In February, in collaboration with the InCommons initiative, we convened a gathering of people who want to empower communities to take control of their health. We shared knowledge with one another about the issue, and we specifically looked at three initiatives.

Columbia Heights School District created an “Edible Schoolyard/Outdoor Classroom” to educate students about good nutrition and to provide a welcoming gathering place for students and the community. The Neighborhood Food Project is a grassroots effort to increase access to healthy food in four neighborhoods in Saint Paul: Dayton’s Bluff, Payne-Phalen, Thomas-Dale/Frogtown, and Summit-University. Dakota County Public Health Department – concerned because of a report published by the New England Journal of Medicine stating that, because of obesity, this generation of children could be the first in the history of the United States to live less healthful and shorter lives than their parents – worked with Wilder Research to conduct a series of focus groups with parents and caregivers of preschool children, and then implemented evidence-based programs in over 200 child care centers to improve nutrition and increase physical activity.

InCommons has begun to connect Minnesotans so they can find and share credible tools, knowledge and resources to solve community problems. Lessons learned in one community can become starting points for addressing similar issues in towns and cities elsewhere in the state. Through InCommons, strangers can become powerful allies in support of common endeavors.

The United States ranks above almost all developed countries of the world in rates of obesity for children and adults. These are rapidly increasing. (See http://www.mncompass.org/health/index.php ) Addressing obesity (and many other issues) requires community will and engagement, informed by solid information on community trends and on what interventions can work to push those trends in a positive direction. Working together, we can make a difference. I encourage you to join our virtual gathering on InCommons and add your voice to making our communities healthier. Join us at:

http://www.incommons.org/en-us/node/3169/gathering