A deep well of resources on PAR

WLU psychology professors Geoff Nelson, Mark Pancer and Colleen Loomis hope the province takes notice of their ongoing project's latest findings - piling more evidence onto their argument that at-risk children who participate in early prevention programs are more likely to succeed later in life.

Is your community collaborative effort making a difference? To answer this question, you now have access to an array of tools and resources that can help you prove that it is.

The current issue of The Drum Beat e-magasine is focused on participatory research

Alternative Index to GDP for Measuring Opportunity & Progress Launching Nov. 10 The American Human Development Project, a nonpartisan initiative of the Social Science Research Council, seeks to move beyond an overreliance on GDP as a measure of well-being, today released The Measure of America 2010-2011: Mapping Risks and Resilience (foreword by economist Jeffrey Sachs). The report is the latest update to the pioneering American Human Development (HD) Index, first introduced in The Measure of America 2008-2009.

Poverty is the single greatest threat to individual human development and it simultaneously creates profound social disruption in the United States and around the world. Unless institutions and citizens take steps now to reduce and prevent poverty--and the growing inequality that deepens and widens its damaging repercussions--we will face a nightmarish future that can be measured in untold numbers of destroyed lives, communities, and institutions.

Chad Nelsen who is the Environmental Director at the Surfrider Foundation where he has worked since 1998.  (He's currently getting his Ph.D in surf economics!) He gave a presentation about how Surfrider Foundation is striving to make its grassroots network more effective.    He touched on how they are using social networks/media in this effort.

only through basic changes in underlying conditions in society, would the world be different.

Compelling multi-part series at Slate.com investigating inequality in the US

Psi Chi quarterly magazine, Eye on Psi Chi article on Community Psychology.

It's designed to give you and your team an at-a-glance look at the ingredients of advocacy efforts. It can guide you to clarify the elements of your own campaign: goals and impacts; audience; what you bring to your campaign; the activities and tactics you're planning for; and benchmarks along the way to your goals. As you click on your choices in each area, you will see your campaign strategy come into focus. And you'll get some clues about how to gauge your progress and make improvements.

nuPOLIS is the Internet presence of the Innovation Network for Communities (INC), a national non-profit helping to develop and spread scalable innovations that transform the performance of community systems such as education, energy, land use, transportation and workforce development.

Many of the recommendations in Fair society, healthy lives have been made in previous reports on health inequalities. I was part of the Marmot review team for a few months and we made a conscious decision not to make a long list of recommendations addressing every single aspect of health inequalities. Instead what the report seeks to do differently is to present health inequalities as a question of fairness and encourage all parts of society to play their part. Health inequalities are traditionally regarded as a problem for the NHS but as this report argues (reflecting the 1998 Acheson report) the NHS is but one player in this task. Tackling health inequalities means addressing the social determinants of health - those factors that shape health and wellbeing such as social environments, the housing and neighbourhoods where people live, education, income, standard of living, occupation and working conditions. Clearly the NHS cannot tackle these issues alone, central and local government departments, the third and private sectors as well as individuals themselves have a role to play. The report makes six wide-ranging recommendations. The primary recommendation is to give every child the best start in life. This means supporting Sure Start programmes, maternity services and parenting programmes so they can better deliver their services to those most in need. A great deal of evidence demonstrates that these programmes lead to long-term improvements in health and education outcomes - cutting these programmes would reverse the progress made in the last 10-15 years. Another recommendation is to create and develop healthy and sustainable places and communities. Those working in planning, transport, housing or environment departments need to work with their colleagues in public health to plan and develop joint strategies and outcomes. The quality of parks, the number of take-aways in an area, road safety - all of these decisions influence how we live our lives and

Social Edge is a program of the Skoll Foundation that was inspired by Jeff Skoll's commitment to connecting people with shared passions. Social Edge is the global online community where social entrepreneurs and other practitioners of the social benefit sector connect to network, learn, inspire and share resources.

This evidence-based curriculum is intended as a tool for community-institutional partnerships that are using or planning to use a CBPR approach to improving health. It can be used by partnerships that are just forming as well as mature partnerships.