What you want to learn more about?
- Jobs? Housing? Health Care? Education? The environment?
Whatever it is, the Key to Community project wants to make it easier for you to learn more and grow the good in your community.
To begin to understand an issue, it helps to understand:
- Who is affected
- Who is involved in helping
- What is happening now
- What changes people are working on
Many of the issues we care about, like having better education for our children and more housing we can afford, involve many different parts of the community: government, nonprofits, business, individual volunteers and more. No one public agency or organization can fix it all. That means it can take a while to really understand an issue, so be patient. The good news is that also means there are many ways for many people to get involved.
How to start learning about an issue
- Talk to people who care about the issue
- Find out what your local government is doing by looking at your city or county website
- Contact your elected representatives
- A librarian can help you get a list of groups that are working on what you care about
- Most communities have a "volunteer center" you can visit online to find out which groups are inviting new volunteers
- For help with the numbers, you can look into local census information (see our tips for using local census information)
The more you learn, the more you can see where your talents and interests can be part of Growing the Good.