Welcome to NatCAN, the National Community Activists' Network. Join us to get advice and support with anything you're trying to do to make the world, or just your part of it, a better place. Meet other people trying to get things done in your area by joining your Regional Discussion Group.

Design with Dialogue (DwD) is an open Toronto-based community of practice for dialogue as co-creation. DwD has the ultimate purpose of facilitating change and meaningful action in our organizations, communities, collaborative projects and as individuals. We learn and play together through participatory design, strategic dialogue, creative arts and emerging facilitation methods.

An initiative involving a series of Art-Dialogue Community Workshops in both St. Catharines and Fort Erie exploring ways to deepen connections across Age & Culture. Many thanks for the Ontario Trillium Foundation for funding this project.

The American Sustainable Business Council family of organizations includes American Sustainable Business Council, which runs public information campaigns that educate and inform the public and policy makers about specific opportunities to create a more vibrant, just and sustainable economy, and American Sustainable Business Council Action Fund, organized under IRS code 501(c)(4), which focuses on legislative and regulatory advocacy. The Council spans a growing network of over 60 business associations across the United States, representing over 200,000 businesses and 300,000 business executives, owners, investors, and others.

NCVO champions and strengthens volunteering and civil society, with over 10,000 members, from the largest charities to the smallest community organisations. There are thousands of voluntary sector organisations in the UK. There are millions of volunteers. Every day, across the country, people give their time, energy and money. And for over 90 years, NCVO has brought the voluntary sector's people together: to solve problems, address root causes, and inspire each other.

This book is the culmination of several years of thinking about the principles behind the open government data movement in the United

Changeologists everywhere: people who are focused on making change happen in their communities, workplaces, and organisations. It's about "what works" in enabling change in fields like sustainability, health, road safety, natural resource management and emergency management. The focus is on ways of thinking that challenge our assumptions, on innovative tools, products, and resources, and on new processes, especially those for facilitating highly diverse groups. It's a rapidly changing field, with plenty to be inspired about, and always something new.

Our mission is to serve, advance, and lead the network of organizations and individuals who cultivate, promote, sustain, and support the arts in America. Connecting your best ideas and leaders from the arts, communities, and business, together we can work to ensure that every American has access to the transformative power of the arts.

Animating Democracy places high value on learning from and building capacity and visibility for practitioners' work on the ground. At the same time Animating Democracy brings to bear Americans for the Arts' strengths in research, policy, professional development, visibility, and advocacy specifically to advance and elevate arts for change work on field, cross-sector, and national levels. Animating Democracy routinely connects and collaborates with other organizations and field leaders working at the heart of arts for change in order to draw on expertise and different perspectives in the planning and implementation of our programs and services.

Art VULUPS is the result of a ten-year assemblage of relationships encompassing geography, environmental science, land use planning, sustainability, art and creativity concepts. During this time, many individuals have contributed with ideas, suggestions and time; they have also helped define the meaning, purpose and scope of this project. Its realization has only been possibly by the genuine embrace of a number of progressive, community-based institutions. Certain elements such as adventure, risk, careful observation and reflection have played an instrumental role in providing for the necessary inspiration, momentum and excitement that all together form the concept of Art as a Vehicle to Understand Land Use Planning and Sustainability Project.

The California Endowment was established in 1996 as a result of Blue Cross of California's creation of its for-profit subsidiary, WellPoint Health Networks. Since then, we've invested in health broadly, from strengthening the safety net for families struggling with poverty to diversifying the health care workforce. The lessons learned from early investments were the genesis for Health Happens Here and the 10-year, $1 billion Building Healthy Communities plan, in which residents in 14 places are working to transform their neighborhoods

Pioneers in such efforts are sharing their practices on a new website. The Natural Capital Business Hub, launched Wednesday at the 2014 GreenBiz Forum, is a joint effort of The Nature Conservancy and the Corporate EcoForum. It showcases the natural capital efforts of some 40 companies - from Alcoa to Lockheed Martin to YES Bank - representing $1.4 trillion in revenues. Nonprofits involved include BSR, Trucost and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). "There's more going on in this field than people expect, and it's really boomed in the last couple of years," said Michelle Lapinski, senior advisor, Businesses Valuing Nature, at The Nature Conservancy. The hub's core tool is a database of case studies, which you can search by industry, geography, benefit, approach or ecosystem. Supporting articles introduce visitors to the basic concepts of valuing natural capital, with categories offering to help you "make the case, benchmark, implement and connect" your own efforts.

About Streetmix. Design, remix, and share your street. Add bike paths, widen sidewalks or traffic lanes, learn how all of this can impact your community. A side project by Code for America 2013 fellows:

ABOUT IDEO WHAT WE DO IDEO (pronounced "eye-dee-oh") is an award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow. We identify new ways to serve and support people by uncovering latent needs, behaviors, and desires. We envision new companies and brands, and we design the products, services, spaces, and interactive experiences that bring them to life. We help organizations build creative culture and the internal systems required to sustain innovation and launch new ventures.

The necessity of human ingenuity and inventiveness is undisputed. And as we look forward to a future of rapid technological and social change, it's clear that a creativity deficit would have sweeping consequences. We need to nurture the skills that will help future generations solve 21st century problems.

Community Builders, a project of the Sonoran Institute, aims to help local leaders build successful communities in the American West: communities with strong and diverse economies, quality growth, vibrant downtowns, and complete neighborhoods. These are communities that offer people more choices in where they live and how they get around. They provide a quality of life that attracts talent, and the businesses that seek it. These are places where people feel they belong to a community and have a shared commitment to its future.

Did you know your zip code can predict how long and how well you live? Learn why in the all-new multimedia exhibit "Health Happens Here." Discover what Californians are doing to build health in communities across the state in this interactive journey through all the places and all the ways health happens in California. Through a series of high-tech games and interactive stations, visitors explore key factors that affect health beyond traditional diet and exercise while earning points that can be donated to 1 of 10 charities to make health happen for all Californians. Engaging and educational fun for the entire family, "Health Happens Here" was developed in partnership with The California Endowment and is a national award-winning, ongoing signature exhibit -- only at The California Museum.

Community Health Centers serve the primary health care needs of more than 22 million patients in over 9,000 locations across America. They play a crucial role in the nation's health care system, providing affordable health services for millions of uninsured, the working poor and newly jobless Americans. Health centers are good for the country. They lower overall health care costs, improve the health of their patients and generate economic opportunities in the communities they serve by providing jobs and training for local people. Community Health Centers create savings in health care every time a patient opts for an exam and treatment at the first sign of a health issue instead of waiting until a costly emergency room visit or hospitalization is the only option. Each health center takes a tailored approach to meet the unique needs of the people in its surrounding community. That local approach to health care, combined with an emphasis on comprehensive preventative care, generates $24 billion in annual savings to the health care system - for the American taxpayer, local, state and federal governments and public and private payers alike.

EmcArts Inc. is a social enterprise for learning and innovation in the arts. We serve as a nonprofit intermediary for many arts funders, and as a service organization for the arts field around innovation. We exist to strengthen the capacities and effectiveness of nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, serving their needs in the design and management of innovative change, and assisting them in building their adaptive capacity.

HELP was commissioned by the Department of Health to show how community development (CD) can be harnessed in the NHS. It introduced a cost-benefit model for calculating the health and other benefits of community development