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Many of us remember a time when walking and bicycling to school was a part of everyday life. In 1969, about half of all students walked or bicycled to school.1 Today, however, the story is very different. Fewer than 15 percent of all school trips are made by walking or bicycling, one-quarter are made on a school bus, and over half of all children arrive at school in private automobiles.2

The Guide shows how to get your school working with Participatory Budgeting (PB). The PB process creates an experiential learning environment for community engagement at a local level. Students are challenged to think about community needs and issues, exploring their environment. They are then empowered to design and implement a solution, taking shared ownership of their school community. They will gain a new attachment to their community; a sense of pride that comes with civic contribution. And they will build a stronger, more collaborative relationship with school administration, one another, and the community at large.

The School has been initiated and nurtured by Forum for the Future, with the support of multiple partners. We have the ambition to serve the emerging field of systems change, as a vehicle for connecting and amplifying spheres of learning and practice, and as a case study of an initiative grown explicitly as a system change endeavour. To do this we have used a methodological framework developed by Anna Birney, Director of the School and author of Cultivating System Change: A Practitioner's Companion (2014). This framework suggests key capabilities for bringing about system change for a sustainable future can be divided into five core areas (read more here on our blog) which underpin our curriculum and our everyday practice.

The Un-School of Disruptive Design is an experimental knowledge lab in New York City. We curate brain-activating events, classes, fellowship programs and knowledge transfer experiences. Our lab encourages people from diverse professional backgrounds to reorient the way they perceive and act in the world, learning how to maximize their capacity to influence and affect positive social and environmental change.  

Matt Powers is an author, educator, seed saver, gardener, and entrepreneur focused on radically transforming the entire K-12 education system through the collegiate system as well as the economy such that it aligns with regenerative science, natural principles, and permaculture ethics: Earth Care, People Care, & Future Care. Matt, a former public high school teacher with a Masters degree in Education, is the author of the first government accredited permaculture curriculum in North America (fully cited, peer-reviewed, & aligned to national standards), and his work continues to spread in schools, colleges, and universities globally with over a dozen books in 6 languages and 9 online courses.

The Small Towns, Big Ideas project began in mid-2006, when the UNC School of Government partnered with the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center to identify and document fifty small towns that were implementing successful or innovative approaches to community economic development.

The "Los Angeles Research Collection" empowers citizens and researchers to use the tools of interactive "time mapping." With HyperCities, you can explore social, cultural, and political history in Los Angeles over time. The site can be accessed from a web-browser in any school, community center, government office, home, and academic setting, allowing citizens to delve into and create their own collections of mappable knowledge and cultural heritage. Community-generated content exists side-by-side with scholar-produced research data, thereby creating new interactions between traditionally separated domains of knowledge.

All Minnesotans should have the opportunity to make choices that allow them to live a long, healthy life, regardless of their income, education, or ethnic background. Everyone wants good health in order to be productive at work and to succeed in school, and to have affordable medical and housing costs. To make this opportunity a choice for all Minnesotans, we all have to do our part in creating and maintaining healthy homes and communities. Every person and every organization has a role to play, small or large.

Whether we are struggling to generate fresh ideas or staring at problems with no solutions in sight, the spark of creative genius often seems out of reach. In this audio lecture from Stanford Social Innovation Review's Nonprofit Management Institute, Stanford Professor Tina Seelig discusses how we can unlock our creative genius through a set of tools and conditions we each have in our control-our "innovation engine." Based on real-world examples and a dozen years of experience teaching courses on creativity and entrepreneurship in the Stanford School of Engineering, Seelig challenges traditional assumptions about creativity to show us how we can seek out the right resources and environment to fuel our innovation engines. She contends that just as the scientific method demystifies the process of discovery, there is a formal process for unlocking the pathway to innovation.

The Center for Civil Society in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA was established in 2002 as a research center focused on civil society, nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and social enterprise. Situated across the School's three academic departments of Public Policy, Urban Planning, and Social Welfare, the Center has, over the past decade, developed graduate curricula, served as a convening center for scholars, practitioners, and students, and has produced an array of studies and publications, including an annual State of the Los Angeles Nonprofit Sector report and survey that has become a trusted source of data and analysis for the regional nonprofit community.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Most examples involve city governments that have opened up decisions around municipal budgets, such as overall priorities and choice of new investments, to citizen assemblies. In other cases, states, counties, schools, universities, housing authorities, and coalitions of community groups have used participatory budgeting to open up spending decisions to democratic participation.

CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) conducts research on civic education in schools, colleges, and community settings and on young Americans' voting and political participation, service, activism, media use, and other forms of civic engagement. It is based at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University.

The Lloyd & Delphine Martin Prosperity Institute is the world's leading think-tank on the role of sub-national factors - location, place and city-regions - in global economic prosperity.We take an integrated view of prosperity, looking beyond economic measures to include the importance of quality of place and the development of people's creative potential. The Institute conducts relevant research to shape debate about economic prosperity and to inform private, public and civic decision-making at the highest levels. Headquartered at the MaRS Centre in downtown Toronto, we are affiliated with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. We also serve as a special resource to the province of Ontario and the greater Toronto region.

The Loughborough Junction Action Group, or LJAG, is an independent group of people who live or work in Loughborough Junction in south-east London. We share the common aim of regenerating and improving the area and the lives of the people who live there. We are embedded in our diverse and vibrant neighbourhood and hold festivals, street parties and monthly gatherings, literary and film events and organise arts activities in local schools. Our members work with many local organisations, such as tenants' and residents' associations, community initiatives such as Building Communities in Coldharbour and the Big Local, which are working on projects designed to empower local people, improve community cohesion and enhance neighbourhood facilities.

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting™ (CPBB), a Denver, Colorado-based, mission driven, organization established in 2010, provides technical and advisory services to assist local governments, school districts and other non-profit agencies achieve Fiscal Health and Wellness through Priority Based Budgeting. This creative and innovative process, developed by CPBB, enables communities to reassess their priorities in order to make sound, long-term funding decisions. Establishing a non-profit solidifies CPBB's mission of being a trusted advisor and a dependable, objective resource, assisting local government leaders who are seeking service excellence, transparency to their stakeholders and a strong desire to achieve the Results that are important to their community.

Founded in 1991, Living Cities is an innovative collaborative of 22 of the world's largest foundations and financial institutions. In nearly 20 years Living Cities members have collectively invested almost $1 billion, helping shape federal funding programs, redirecting public and private resources, and helping communities to build homes, stores, schools, community facilities and more. However, our members are not simply funders. They shape our work and priorities by participating on the Living Cities Board of Directors, four standing committees and three working groups. In sum, our members contribute the time of 80-plus expert program staff toward improving the lives of low-income people and the cities where they live. - See more at: http://www.livingcities.org/about/#sthash.Wkj6TLk6.dpuf

To provide instruction on key concepts and tools of systems thinking. While utilizing the WebEd site, participants will: develop skills and knowledge in the use of systems thinking concepts and tools. experience and practice interactive, inquiry-based instructional and school improvement strategies. use systems thinking tools to analyze issues and identify high leverage interventions. investigate possible applications relevant to their work.

In Slow Democracy, community leader Susan Clark and democracy scholar Woden Teachout describe how citizens around the country are breathing new life into their communities. Large institutions, centralized governments, and top-down thinking are no longer society's drivers. New decision-making techniques are ensuring that local communities-and the citizens who live there-are uniquely suited to meet today's challenges. In Slow Democracy, readers learn the stories of residents who gain community control of water systems and local forests, parents who find creative solutions to divisive and seemingly irreconcilable school-redistricting issues, and a host of other citizen-led actions that are reinvigorating local democracy and decision making.

The Bootcamp Bootleg is an overview of some of our most-used tools. The guide was originally intended for recent graduates of our Bootcamp: Adventures in Design Thinking class. But we've heard from folks who've never been to the d.school that have used it to create their own introductory experience to design thinking.

STATS America is a service of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. We obtain thousands of data items from hundreds of data sets from a dozens of federal and state sources, along with some commercial or private source data.  While STATS America adds value to these data through easy access and functionality, we acknowledge the direct agency source of the data on every table, profile or map.