What do 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 by this issue
- Who is already 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
- Depending on your issue, your neighbors, your local school, local shops or faith community might be a place to start
- Find out what your local government is doing about the issue by looking at your city or county website
- Contact your elected representatives
- A librarian can help you find 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:
- Use this website to look up basic information about your county
- See our tips for using local census information
Let people know why you care about this issue. That can help you make more connections with people who care about the same thing too.
The more you learn, the more you can see where your talents and interests can be part of Growing the Good.