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We're a nonpartisan nonprofit that engages Americans directly to solve shared challenges and craft better policy. Our mission is to strengthen democracy by advancing informed, citizen-developed solutions to challenging public issues. We advance the public interest by creating opportunities for in-depth citizen education and deliberation that generates informed, inclusive solutions to today's toughest problems. To ensure the work of citizens makes an impact, we cultivate creative partnerships and pursue high-impact organizing and outreach strategies that help decision makers and the broader public work together effectively.

ince 1994, VERTICES, LLC. has provided the health care and local government sectors with advanced GIS (Geographic Information System) solutions. VERTICES delivers customized solutions to you in the form of digital maps. Traditional methods of displaying information in columns and rows in a table have evolved into their visualization as digital maps with layers of specific information. With the increasing popularity of the Internet and numerous advancements in information technology, VERTICES has developed new technologies to deliver geographic information to your organization and clients in an easy and affordable way.

The Social Innovation Labs started in 2012 in partnership with the Bush Foundation. In the past two years, more than 1,200 community change makers have participated in 11 lab events. Each lab has had a different theme, but all of them focused on the following overall goal and strategies: Our vision: All Minnesotans thrive in a socially just, ecologically sound, and economically sustainable ecosystem of social innovation. More about our vision: The fruits of the ecosystem and the cultural soil that makes it possible: visioniconStrategies to move toward this vision: 1. Learn new tools and ways of seeing things 2. Advance innovative projects 3. Connect with other change makers Simple rules for the Lab: 1. Bring an open heart, mind, and will  2. Listen to the part, whole, and greater whole 3. Attend to difference, privilege and disparity 4. Tango with different perspectives to seek unexpected sparks 5. Invite a balance of creativity and structure 6. Honor commitments

Everyone knows about the big global challenges like economic instability, loss of nature, poverty, waste, conflict and climate disruption. Even after decades of efforts these monstrous problems are not being tackled so much as tickled! Many of these problems are getting out of hand yet even now the possibility of rapidly reversing all of them is within our grasp. This goal looks unrealistic to many people, given the struggle for meaningful change so far. Yet this is the key; the scale of our ambitions must match the scale of the problems as a whole. This is society's blindspot - see this and civilisation gets the chance to go on. This article is the introduction to an 'advanced research workshop' paper, Seven Policy Switches for Global Security, for the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme

The U.S. Economic Development Administration's investment policy is designed to establish a foundation for sustainable job growth and the building of durable regional economies throughout the United States. This foundation builds upon two key economic drivers - innovation and regional collaboration. Innovation is key to global competitiveness, new and better jobs, a resilient economy, and the attainment of national economic goals. Regional collaboration is essential for economic recovery because regions are the centers of competition in the new global economy and those that work together to leverage resources and use their strengths to overcome weaknesses will fare better than those that do not. EDA encourages its partners around the country to develop initiatives that advance new ideas and creative approaches to address rapidly evolving economic conditions.

Our goal is to advance urban sustainability and shared prosperity through initiatives in transportation, water, climate, and public policy. We coach city leaders, advise decision makers, and find new ways to solve challenges.

We wrote this guide to introduce creative placemaking to transportation planners, public works agencies and local elected officials who are on the front lines of advancing transportation projects.

Over the past 40 years, economic inequality in the United States has returned to levels last seen in the 1920s. Today, the United States is in the top quarter of the world's most unequal countries. Economic mobility-a child's likelihood of occupying a different position on the income ladder than his or her parents did-has fallen well behind Canada, Great Britain, and other advanced economies. And inequality has worsened over the course of the current economic recovery.

Efforts to get the middle class back on track have focused mostly on the jobs lost due to automation, and on programs that could retrain people to do the types of jobs that are now being created in the economy-jobs in healthcare, technology, and advanced manufacturing. But this focus on apprenticeships and employment probably won't be enough to pull the middle class from its tailspin. That's because these types of programs ask the worker to adjust to the changing economy, and in essence blame the worker for not getting the skills they need.

Through SC2, 19 federal agencies work together in partnership with committed city leaders as they implement locally driven economic visions. SC2 does not involve new federal money nor is it a top-down approach. Based on a city's local vision and its request for federal involvement, SC2 seeks to support each city by increasing federal-local collaboration and improving how the federal government invests in and delivers technical assistance to advance locally driven economic development and job creation goals.

Across the country, and throughout the world, many large and small groups of individuals and families, in partnership with businesses and governments, are in the process of making a new system - where people know what they are entitled to and can allocate the money that is assigned for their benefit.. This system is called Self-Directed Support, or Consumer-Directed Care. Variations of these terms are used in Education and Health Care. Internationally, this trend towards personalisation of funding is well-advanced. In Australia it is beginning in disability, accident compensation, aged care and soon in technical and vocational education. But Australian governments and institutions have been very slow to pick it up. We aim to pull them into the 21st century.

"Rio+20" is the short name for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012 - twenty years after the landmark 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. Rio+20 is also an opportunity to look ahead to the world we want in 20 years. At the Rio+20 Conference, world leaders, along with thousands of participants from the private sector, NGOs and other groups, will come together to shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection on an ever more crowded planet.

CEOs for Cities is a civic lab of today's urban leaders catalyzing a movement to advance the next generation of great American cities. CEOs for Cities works with its network partners to develop great cities that excel in the areas most critical to urban success: talent, connections, innovation and distinctiveness.

Our goal is to provide public finance data, tools and training to local community-based organizations to strengthen their public interest and organizing campaigns. Equity in Public Funds partners with and increases the ability of community-based organizations to produce analyses of City and County fiscal inequities and advocate for reform.

The Deliberative Democracy Consortium is an alliance of the major organizations and leading scholars working in the field of deliberation and public engagement. The DDC represents more than 50 foundations, nonprofit organizations, and universities, collaborating to support research activities and advance democratic practice, in North America and around the world.

The Institute's vision is to create healthy, connected communities that support active living and that advance opportunities for all people through walkable streets, livable cities and better built environments.

Advancing a new understanding of democracy for the 21st century and promoting new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. Promoting new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. The Collaborative is a national leader in the field of community development through our Community Wealth Building Initiative. The Initiative sustains a wide range of projects involving research, training, policy development, and community-focused work designed to promote an asset-based paradigm and increase support for the field across-the-board.

The Democracy Collaborative was established in 2000 to advance a new understanding of democracy for the 21st century and to promote new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. Our goal is to change the prevailing paradigm of community economic development-and of the economy as a whole-in the United States toward a new emphasis and system based on: Broadening ownership and stewardship over capital Democracy at the workplace Stabilizing community and emphasizing locality Equitable and inclusive growth Environmental, social, and institutional sustainability The Collaborative is a national leader in the field of community development through our Community Wealth Building Initiative. The Initiative sustains a wide range of projects involving research, training, policy development, and community-focused work designed to promote an asset-based paradigm and increase support for the field across-the-board.

Actively promoting a unique, antidisciplinary culture, the MIT Media Lab goes beyond known boundaries and disciplines, encouraging the most unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas. It creates disruptive technologies that happen at the edges, pioneering such areas as wearable com- puting, tangible interfaces, and affective computing. Today, faculty members, research staff, and students at the Lab work in 23 research groups on more than 350 projects that range from digital approaches for treating neurological disorders, to advanced imaging technologies that can "see around a corner," to the world's first "smart" powered ankle-foot prosthesis. The Lab is committed to looking beyond the obvious to ask the questions not yet asked-questions whose answers could radically improve the way people live, learn, express themselves, work, and play.

WHO WE ARE Design Impact is a non-profit social innovation firm made up of designers, community development practitioners, social entrepreneurs, and educators. We collaborate with passionate people, bring design and innovation practice to the table, and work together to design a better world. Our mission is to: * INCUBATE projects that transform communities, * EQUIP leaders with social innovation tools, and * ADVANCE methods of creative community change.