Could senior cooperative housing, a model gaining popularity in states with aging populations, be the solution to alleviating social isolation and population loss in Montanas rural small towns?

In Montanas rural counties, where demographic trends show large numbers of young people leaving for the states fast-growing urban areas, the need for elderly housing solutions is going to become increasingly important.

These communities are losing population and growing older. But many seniors in these communities dont want to leave because they know their neighbors and have spent decades as leaders in the community. Housing options for the elderly are few and far between in these areas. Older farmhouses are often poorly equipped for people to age in place, as they often have stairs and require lots of maintenance. Many small towns lack assisted living facilities or nursing homes, and many senior citizens dont need or want that type of round-the-clock care, preferring a more independent lifestyle.

Across the United States, especially in places like Florida, Arizona and California, senior cooperative housing organized around the concepts of resident control and sustaining independence with minimal services is becoming an appealing model. Cooperative housing usually includes independently owned living units, such as condos or houses, arranged around a communal gathering space with some shared activities.

Senior cooperative housing communities are different from assisted living facilities or retirement communities because theyre not usually developed by outside entities, and residents take charge of programming, forming boards that govern everything from landscaping to occupancy. They often include shared kitchen facilities, outdoor areas and rooms where visitors can stay.

What attracts older adults to senior cohousing is the desire for greater social engagement, for a new old-fashioned neighborhood, as one member put it, said Sherry Cummings, a former professor of social work at the University of Tennessee Knoxville who co-authored a book about the facilities. Theyre designed so people see each other a lot. They typically get together for several meals or activities each week. They help one another out with practical tasks, such as driving someone to the airport, and support each other through crisis situations.

In 2016, the Montana Cooperative Development Center funded a feasibility study on the prospects for new housing cooperatives in the Northern Rockies. The study documented a high degree of interest in the development of housing cooperatives as a potential strategy to address a number of housing needs in the northern Rockies.

Jill Eversole Nolan, a retired Ohio State University faculty member, co-authored a study on rural cooperative housing for older adults for the Journal of Extension in 2001, aimed at giving extension offices information for people curious about the facilities.

Cooperative housing for older adults would most certainly be a viable option in Montana, she said in an interview with the Missoulian earlier this year.

Eversole Nolan completed her doctorate on quality of life for older adults in rural communities, with a focus on senior cooperative housing.

In reviewing the literature, older adults wanted to stay in the community where they had lent their leadership and where they had family, she said. Their friends were there, their farm was there, but as dynamics changed many of the children would go off and not return to the farm, so they were at an age where they could not maintain the farm but they still wanted to stay in the community. But there were not housing opportunities.

Eversole Nolan visited cooperative living communities for those age 55 and older in rural towns in the Midwest and in the southeastern United States.

I interviewed one woman that was 95, she recalled. She said, I was born here, I grew up here, I got married and raised children here and I want to die here. Something like a cooperative housing community was a good choice for her because she could not live in her home and continue her way of life.

Older houses in rural areas lack upgrades that allow older, disabled and frail adults to function normally, Eversole Nolan said. Something as simple as a rounded faucet knob can be difficult for someone with arthritis, and a lack of elevators in multi-story housing can be impossible to live with for some.

She also noted that cooperative housing isnt just for people who want to be social all the time.

Some individuals didnt want to partake in a lot of group interaction, she said. Others engaged in many activities. So it gave them a choice to choose the way of life they were accustomed to living.

Margaret Roesch is an organizer for and resident of Village Hearth Cohousing, an intentional cohousing neighborhood for 55-and-over LGBT residents, friends and allies in Durham, North Carolina.

We certainly never imagined, when we joined Village Hearth as members, that we would move in during a global pandemic, Roesch said in a recent newsletter to members. It has certainly added some unexpected twists, but it also makes us all the more thankful and excited to be joining a community of caring people.

The 28-residence facility includes a common house and was built just this year.

People are moving in now, and instead of in-person happy hours, the group has instituted Zoom happy hours during the pandemic.

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A home of their own, together | Features - boulder-monitor.com

By Clare S. Richie, public policy specialist, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta

In June, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) announced Vote Your Voice, a partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta to invest up to $30 million through 2022 from the SPLCs endowment to engage voters and increase voter registration, education, and participation; support Black- and brown-led organizations often ignored by traditional funders; support and prototype effective voter engagement strategies; and re-enfranchise returning citizens despite intentional bureaucratic challenges. SPLC recently announced a total of nearly $5.5 million in a first round of grants to 12 voter outreach organizations across the Deep South, four of those organizations are in Georgia.

The 12 organizations have proven track records empowering voters of color and presented innovative proposals to boost voter registration, education and mobilization in Vote Your Voices five targeted states Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. The grants will help the organizations continue their efforts to turn out low-propensity voters amid voter suppression schemes and other barriers, including the pandemic, in advance of upcoming elections.

Organizations working to boost voter engagement in Georgia are:

Black Voters Matter increases civic engagement and power building in predominantly Black communities. The organization works in nine southern states Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. In 2019, it expanded into two northern states Michigan and Pennsylvania. Through the $500,000 grant the organization will register, educate and mobilize Black voters in 17 Alabama counties and 24 Georgia counties through mini grants to grassroots groups and conduct outreach via texting and other digital and social media strategies.

The Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agendas mission is to improve the quality of governance through a more informed and active electorate who will hold elected officials accountable.The organization operates seven offices metro Atlanta, Athens-Clarke County, Bibb County, Chatham County,Dougherty County,Richmond County and Troup County and conductscivic engagementactivities, registers thousands ofvoters,holds educationalforumsand mobilizes volunteers to participatethrough phone banks, texting and providing rides to the polls, focusing primarily on African American women and men in57 counties across the state.Through the $75,000 grant, the organization will continue their work focusing on people of color, young people, single women and low-income Georgians. Their tactics include phone banking, texting and relational organizing.

The New Georgia Project (NGP) is focused on voter registration, engagement and power building for the large and growing population of African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans in Georgia. NGP is part of a movement not a moment to meet the changing demographics of Georgia, to harness the unheard voices of the New American Majority and to position Georgia for leadership in the South and across the country, identify local policy priorities, demystify the political process, and move their families and neighbors to action. Through the $750,000 grant, the organization will engage in voter registration, education and mobilization among low-propensity communities of color, women of color and young people. Additionally, it will counter online voter suppression with videos, songs, social listening and tech tools.

ProGeorgia is a bold, trusted, and diverse collaborative that champions an equitable and inclusive democracy, for and with traditionally underrepresented communities. The organization supports and coordinates the civic engagement programs of its diverse partners. ProGeorgia develops the infrastructure, executes the joint strategies, and employs new tools and technology to assure a government that is more responsive to the needs of its constituencies. Through the $750,000 grant, the organization will continue its work to register, educate, mobilize and protect voters in low-propensity communities of color as well as women of color and young people, focusing on 33 counties for voter engagement and 70 counties for election protection.

SPLC and Community Foundation have started to accept applications for grants in a second round of distribution across the target states. The initiative is seeking a broad cross-section of nonprofit organizations with deep roots within communities prioritized; experience in nonpartisan voter registration, education and mobilization; and a commitment to working with the initiatives data partner to track progress and impact.

Together with the first cohort, organizations participating in the Vote Your Voice initiative will use grants to amplify their ongoing work to engage millions of voters across the South this election cycle to exercise their basic right to vote and ensure their voices are heard.

Applications for the second round of grants are due by August 14, 2020. Organizations can apply here. Additional application information may be found here. Click here for more details including a full list of organizations that received first-round grants.

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Southern Poverty Law Center Announces Initial Grants in $30M Vote Your Voice Initiative Four Georgia... - SaportaReport

Thanks to intentional culture-building, startup workplaces have evolved to become much more than officestheyre where people take meals, cultivate friendships, and find their purpose. Great culture attracts and retains great talent, encourages people to spend more time working toward company goals, and rallies the team around a mission. For many employees at these companies (and the other companies that emulate their cultures), the role of the workplace has taken on an outsize importance.

But as round after round of startup layoffs have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, the downsides of this type of culture are becoming rapidly apparent. As a founder-turned-venture capitalist, I find myself contemplating the total costs of this indoctrination-style approach to culture. When people are laid off, they lose income and health insurancedevastating losses in the middle of a global health pandemic. But they also lose some things that are far less tangible but potentially even more costly. Intentional and immersive culture-building has tied our identities, self-worth, emotional security, and lifes purpose to our jobs, leaving both employeesand employersvulnerable.

Years ago, after a round of layoffs at TaskRabbit, the company I founded, I had to face some hard truths about the culture we had so painstakingly built. We spent years cultivating an environment that could offer fulfillment, purpose, and a sense of belonging to every team membera family in a very real sense. Our success in doing so meant that layoffs suddenly became about much more than discontinuing a persons income. We had power we shouldnt have had as employers: Thanks to the culture wed built, separating a person from their job also separated them from their sense of self, their purpose, and their closest friends. There isnt a severance package in the world that can soften that blow.

There isnt a severance package in the world that can soften that blow.

Just as record-high unemployment has made it crystal clear that relying on employers to provide healthcare is a faulty and dangerous idea, its time to stop propping up the very Silicon Valley notion that a persons identity, lifes purpose, and belonging should go hand in hand with their place of employment. This moment requires a total shift in mindset. Instead of building cultures that emphasize a companys role in peoples lives, what if we dedicate our efforts to prioritizing the individuals themselves?

As the founders I work with have started to grapple with this very question, many find themselves arriving at the same conclusion: Shifting as much autonomy as possible to the employee makes companies stronger.

This simple mindset shift meets the moment were in. As parentsparticularly momsshoulder compounding responsibilities at home and many young people pour off-hours into social justice, its becoming more apparent than ever that employees require greater control over how they spend their time, energy, and talents. Workplaces must adjust to accommodating the full lives of their employees to navigate this new reality. The solution isnt as simple as switching to Zoom meetings and remote project managementit requires a culture that gives employees greater agency over their own work.

Recognizing the full life of your employees requires accepting that we all have multiple roles to play. People can be engineers and activists, marketers and moms, dev-ops and dads. People who write code by day might write short stories by night. That star support employee might also front a band. Every team is full of people with obligations to their families, social circles, passions, and communities. By giving each employee full control of how and when they work, they can better integrate their work into the rest of their livesand their workplace will cease to become the central place where people feel a sense of purpose. Instead of encouraging employees to stay late at work, push them to set a schedule that helps them find balanceand meaningin other parts of their lives as well. This isnt just the necessary remedy for getting through this particular moment, and it isnt just a fluffy nice thing to doits a pathway to creating stronger companies over time.

It will bring a greater wealth of experience to your workplace. When individuals are encouraged to prioritize their other life roles, they bring those experiences and skills back to their work. This diversity of thought and perspective is something that many startups lack, and the positive impact of it is incalculable. Imagine: Spending more time helping his aging parents leads your designer to have an UX epiphany that streamlines your app. The community organizing your product manager does on the side shows up in the way she marshals resources to get that feature done on time. Helping her kid with history homework gives your copywriter an idea that becomes your next successful lead generation campaign. Moving away from an office-centric life also makes groupthink much more difficult, which means you can approach problems with more perspectives and get to clarity (and solutions) faster.

It increases a companys resilience and agility. Companies with more individualistic cultureslike those with distributed teams and greater employee autonomyadjusted much more quickly to our new work-from-home reality than companies with office-centric cultures. Working parents suddenly juggling home education and childcare on top of work responsibilities at companies that didnt take an individualistic approach found themselves in an impossible bind. Imagine how much productivity could have been gained had every working mother simply been empowered to figure out her own schedule and workflows.

This ability to swiftly adapt to changing circumstances is often the difference between survival and death for early stage companies. Theres no such thing as an entirely future-proofed business, but trusting the individuals on your team to make the best decisions for themselves and for the company is a solid start.

It boosts the value, productivity, and momentum of your employees. Giving your employees the leeway to invest in themselves and their lives doesnt just increase your chances of retaining them, it increases the value they can bring to your company. All that energy people spend figuring out how to juggle the many obligations in their lives on the margins can actually be used for productive work. Whats more, people experiencing success in other aspects of their lives can use that momentum in the work they do for your company.

Theres no doubt that culture can make or break a company. As an ecosystem, startups have been wise to prioritize it and approach it with intention. But the cultures we built before simply arent good enough for what comes next. This moment of uncertainty provides a unique opportunity to do things better, and founders thinking about the future understand they must adapt. Rather than turning a company into employees whole world, focusing culture-building efforts on giving employees agency and celebrating their lives beyond work is a good place to start.

Leah Solivan is the founder of TaskRabbit and the general partner at Fuel Capital.

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COVID-19 is revealing the flaws of Silicon Valley culture - Fast Company

The current global health emergency and the ongoing uprising against police violence in the United States have once again laid bare the nations enduring crisis of white supremacy. In the design and planning professions, many scholars, practitioners, and organizers have pointed out that these challenges are not new, but foundationalwhiteness and anti-Black racism have long defined the ways in which design is framed, taught, and practiced. As design schools across the country begin to respond to longstanding criticism over their wholesale embrace of whiteness in pedagogy, it is useful to examine the work that some educators and researchers are doing to analyze and challenge systems of oppression, both within the disciplines and more generally in U.S. cities. The Architects Newspaper talked to several practitioners at the department of urban planning and design at Harvards Graduate School of Design (GSD) about the work theyve been doing in this area.

Urban Design and the Color Line

Taught by Stephen Gray, associate professor of urban design, Urban Design and the Color Line is a seminar workshop that developed out of a series of research projects at the GSD. Having advised student researchers on mapping strategies for the exhibition Bang! Bang! Bang! Housing Policy and the Geography of Fatal Police Encounters and the atlas project Map the Gap: Visualizing Sociospatial Inequity in the U.S., Gray went on to conduct extensive research on racial inequities in the Boston area for Urban Intermedia: City, Archive, Narrative, an exhibition curated by professors Eve Blau and Robert Pietrusko.

In the portion of the exhibit that focused on Boston, Gray and Alex Krieger, research professor in practice of urban design, examined neighborhoods in the citys South Bay area, where redlining, urban renewal, and infrastructure projects have long determined which communities have access to resources. As Gray told AN in a recent conversation, outwardly beneficial linear park projects like Southwest Corridor Parkfirst developed on Bostons South End in the 1970s and 80sraised particularly compelling questions about race, urban design, and infrastructure. If people arent meaningfully involved in the imagination and making of a space, does that space actually have any benefit to them in the long run? Gray asked.

Following his work on Urban Intermedia, Gray developed the curriculum for Urban Design and the Color Line, a course that centers on infrastructural reuse projects in the United Satesnamely, New Yorks High Line and its progeny. Gray and his students have partnered with the Urban Institute, GSD CoDesign, Friends of the High Line cofounder Robert Hammond, and the High Line Network (HLN), a group of leaders of industrial reuse projects around the world that aims to learn from the social and economic challenges faced by the High Line, to help develop an equitable impacts framework pilot for 19 HLN member projects. Pairs of students in the course focused on two infrastructure projects each during the semester. After analyzing the histories and geographies of racial inequity in the cities where the projects are located, the students proposed equity agendas for their assigned HLN projectsrecommendations that were handed off to the partner organizations for possible implementation.

According to Gray, the class and its research constitute a sort of informed speculation: Were using student research to inform curriculum, which is now informing practice. The ultimate objective is to deploy student minds and educational resources to make a real and measurable impact in the world, a mandate that has only become more pronounced as institutions and city agencies alike are called to action over white supremacy and state violence against Black people. Americas segregated cities present immense challenges to the people who shape their built environments, but as Gray notes, If urban designers are intentional about our work, we can begin to break down some of those divisions.

CoDesign

Founded in 2018 at the GSD, CoDesign is a multifaceted, school-wide initiative that aims to tighten links between design, research, teaching, practice, and activism. Building on existing relationships between government agencies, GSD researchers, private design practices, and local communities in the Boston area, CoDesign equips educators, researchers, and students with tools for a more equitable approach to design and community engagement. This work has taken many forms over the course of two years, including technical assistance for the citys Community Preservation Act and research assistance for the Boston Foundations Place Leadership Network and the Highline Network.

In a recent conversation with AN, CoDesigns faculty coordinator Dr. Lily Song reflected on both the opportunities and challenges presented by university-based community engagement work. For one, relationships between elite institutions like Harvard and local BIPOC or working-class neighborhoods are historically defined by institutional exclusion, extraction, and displacement. There are also disconnects between what is typically expected of design students at the GSD and what local partners are often seeking. Communities are hardly looking for abstract design propositions or beautiful renderings that dont reflect their aspirations or their needs, Song said. At the same time, the skills of students can be useful if theyre plugged into what efforts local community groups are leading. Leveraging the GSDs convening power, research acumen, and financial resources, CoDesigns local partners can advocate for policy changes, fundraise for community-led projects, and begin to challenge established power relations.

As the GSD and other leading design schools face intense scrutiny over their cultures of white supremacy and intensification of systems of racial injustice, CoDesign teamed up with Powerful Pathways to release the Design Studio First Aid Kit. Posted on the initiatives Instagram page and shared as a free zine online, the kit offers straightforward guidance on how to begin confronting white supremacy and its intersecting oppressions in studio environments. Song views it as a resource for jumpstarting a much longer, more committed process. The idea is that we can all administer first aid in ways that are accessibleits not a panacea, but a first step, Song said.

Acknowledging that CoDesign is somewhat constrained by its need to serve a wide variety of communities and stakeholders across the Boston area, Song also recognizes the ways in which the current uprising has invigorated the push for anti-racist practices. With the longstanding scourge of police violence against Black people and the broader injustices of white supremacy in stark relief, there is an opportunity to advance a more liberatory and reparative vision with CoDesign. The Design Studio First Aid Kit is just one part of that process. Moving forward, Song emphasizes the need to foreground radical community work led by BIPOC organizers. Whether we ally or accomplice, we first need to reckon with our own identities, power, and privileges and use them in service of these movements. Its defining yourself and your work beyond your day job, Song said. You harness the network and resources you have at your disposal.

Design for the Just City

Design for the Just City centers on the fundamental question: Would we design better places if we put the values of equality, inclusion, or equity first? Led by Toni L. Griffin, professor in practice of urban planning, since its inception nearly ten years ago, the research lab has promoted justice in the design and planning disciplines through a series of exhibitions, master-classes, talks, workshops, and publications.

In order to frame its mission, the lab has spent years developing the Just City Index, a matrix designed to be used as a tool for communities to establish their own definition and principles for what makes each city or neighborhood more just. The listed values range from reconciliation and spirituality to protest, empathy, and participation, all categorized under a series of 12 Values Indicators, from acceptance to welfare. Through its free digital resources, as well as design workshops hosted in Johannesburg, Amsterdam, and Cambridge since 2018, the Just City Lab aims to empower communities to articulate their own values and aspirations.

In 2015, the Just City Lab collaborated with Gehl Studio, the J. Max Bond Center, and Transportation Alternatives to compile Public Life & Urban Justice in NYCs Plazas, a report investigating the real and potential impacts of public space design on public life and urban justice. Using seven public spaces in New York City as case studies, the lab and its collaborators took a critical look at the contributions of the citys Public Plaza Program to quality of life and issues of social justice.

In the wake of the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd by police in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, the Just City Lab has released one essay per week from its 2015 publication The Just City Essays: 26 Visions for Equity, Inclusion, and Opportunity. The volume contains reflections and visions for how to pursue reparative and restorative justice in 22 cities through architecture, city planning, art, and policy-making. With writings by such prominent figures as urbanist Teddy Cruz, architect Theaster Gates, and former mayor of Minneapolis Betsy Hodges, The Just City Essays are meant as a provocation, a call to action. As the Just City Lab states on its Instagram page, Now, during these times of dissonance, unrest, and uncertainty, their contents have become ever more importantWe hope they may continue conversations about our shared responsibility for the just city.

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Harvard GSD faculty take on the challenge of building just cities - The Architect's Newspaper

Carleton University is pleased to announce Professor James McGowan (School for Studies in Art and Culture: Music) has been named the 2020 Carleton University Chair in Teaching Innovation.

On behalf of Carleton University, I am pleased to acknowledge and congratulate James McGowan on this achievement, said Provost and Vice-President (Academic) Jerry Tomberlin.

The Chair in Teaching Innovation is an important appointment that plays a significant role in furthering teaching excellence across Carleton.

Prof. James McGowan (Photo Jenna Gernon)

Established last year, the Chair in Teaching Innovation is awarded annually to an educator who has demonstrated teaching excellence and innovation across their academic career. It provides faculty with a $45,000 grant spanning three years to undertake projects that advance the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and student success at Carleton.

James is an outstanding educator who is fully invested in providing students with creative and engaging learning experiences, said Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning) David Hornsby. Were looking forward to seeing his project implemented and the impact it will have throughout the Carleton community and beyond.

McGowan, who has been teaching at Carleton since 2010, sees the important role the performing arts play in student success, mental health and wellbeing, and fostering a sense of community. With this award, he plans to create and support a network of like-minded instructors, students and staff using the principles of Performative Learning and Artistic Communities of Engagement (PLACE).

The network will identify opportunities for performative learning, exploring experiential arts-based approaches to engage students in a variety of disciplines, and create artistic communities of engagement that allow students to find means of expression beyond course work.

Receiving this distinction signifies to me that the university is ready to be a leader in applying and researching innovative approaches that allow students to experience a wide range of disciplines of study enhanced by the intentional exploration of the arts, said McGowan.

It seems more than ever that we as a university community want to grow in ways that create meaningful, exciting and safe experiences to challenge students to thrive and engage artistically with communities on campus.

While PLACE will start this Fall with online programming of songwriting and community music at Carleton, McGowan plans to extend the network to include a variety of arts and non-arts-based disciplines, and eventually expand outside of the university.

Professor McGowans ambitious project will employ arts-based approaches to learning in disciplines far beyond the humanities, offering students unique opportunities to integrate performative learning into any field of study, said Pauline Rankin, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Professor McGowans extensive experience with diverse forms of performance studies makes him the ideal champion for this exciting experiment at Carleton. His vision for the Chair in Teaching Innovation is particularly relevant at a moment in which many of us are turning or returning to the arts to sustain and inspire us during this unprecedented period.

Through the PLACE initiative, McGowan says he hopes to enrich the student experience at Carleton and promote student engagement within the community, while acting as a resource for colleagues in developing innovative educational strategies.

The biggest hope I have is that the PLACE initiative will give students a richer experience at Carleton. For some students, that might mean that they see opportunities to reach out to others to explore interdisciplinary conversations. For others, this might mean that they simply enjoy a creative activity with other students, helping to sustain them through the inevitable darker days, said McGowan.

Ultimately, I truly hope that applying PLACE principles at Carleton will create and support programming that will enhance students connection to this beautiful campus community. In tandem with this goal, I hope that wecolleagues with common interests and Iwill be able to explore and share the results of studying the impact of this programming more broadly.

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Announcing the 2020 Carleton University Chair in Teaching Innovation - Carleton Newsroom

In partnership with our parent organization, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), IJNet is connecting journalists with health experts and newsroom leaders through a webinar series on COVID-19.The series is partof theICFJ Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum.

This article is part of our online coverage of reporting on COVID-19. To see more resources,click here.

You have a television station. We have these AK-47s. We will have to tell our stories with these guns, members of an indigenous community who had joined Maoist forces told journalistShubhranshu Choudhary. Your media will not give us any space.

Their representation is zero, and Indias mainstream media shows little interest in changing that, Choudhary said during a panel discussion co-hosted Tuesday by ICFJ and theMedia Diversity Institute(MDI).

Around the world, a lack of media diversity has dire consequences. Yet even among news outlets that claim to value diversity, most have failed in their efforts to hire, retain, engage and report accurately on minority and disenfranchised communities, panelists said.

At the same time, the global pandemics outsized effect on already-vulnerable communities, along with the growing strength of the Black Lives Matter movement in both the U.S. and other countries, is forcing a reckoning in many newsrooms, they said.Choudhary, founder of IndiasCGNet Swaraand a former ICFJ Knight Fellow, joinedTory Parrish, regional director of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in the U.S; Frans Jennekens, head of diversity at Dutch broadcasterNTR; and Syrian journalistZaina Erhaim, communications manager at theInstitute for War & Peace Reporting(IWPR), to examine the state of media diversity. MDI Communications Manager Anna Lekas Miller moderated the discussion.

It's really hard to cover a community when you only swoop in when bad things happen, said Parrish, a business reporter at Newsday. And that has been a problem with the media for centuries.

In the U.S. this year, black journalists have become more outspoken in the newsroom for the last couple of months, she said. In her own newsroom, there are conversationsgoing on about coverage, about diversity, about hiring and the importance of diversity at the management level, she said.

She said hiring managers need to be more intentional in their efforts to hire and retain diverse talent. The quality of the talent is there. But the issue is how deliberate are you in bringing the talent onto your staff? And it's not enough to just say, Well, we posted the job. Did you reach out to any journalists of color? Did you reach out to the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Asian American Journalists Association offices? She emphasized the importance of hiring more than just one or two people from each underrepresented group, which leads to isolation and high turnover, she said.

Jennekens, with NTR, said he believes the newsroom is mostly a representation of the ruling powers. And the whole problem is, in my view, that in the newsroom there is this system of tapping. So when people are hired for the newsroom, they want to have someone who looks like the people who are already in the newsroom. And as long as this whole system of tapping is not more or less destroyed, I think it will be very difficult to change a newsroom.

He thinks the journalism industry should see this as a business case, as something that makes this medium stronger. You get more viewers, you get more participants. Your base and society will be stronger if you are more diverse and you give more room to different kinds of voices and to people who are not the same as yourself.

Erhaim, the Syrian journalist who works for IWPR, noted that in some cultures, newsroom diversity is a non-starter.

When we're speaking about the Middle East or the Arab world, diversity is in many cases criminalized, she said.

Getting to know who you're living with, getting to know the other cultures, sects and ethnicities is going to make a kind of peace, Ehraim said. You might be able to unite together, but everyone was raised on fearing the others and that was their way of controlling the area and keeping everyone silent.

Erhaim also advocated for free legal counsel for journalists who want to sue the large media companies that parachute in and take unfair advantage of local reporters.

We don't know our rights. We are not raised to know about rights or demand them, she said. If enough journalists begin to take legal action, big media institutions will think twice before taking advantage of local journalists or treating them as free-of-charge sources.

Choudary urged others to start their own, independent platforms for news. As an ICFJ Knight Fellow, he created CGNet Swara, a citizen journalism platform that uses Bluetooth technologyto bring news to media-dark villages in India.

We should be more interactive. A lot of journalists are afraid of their own audience, he said.

Can people tell their own stories? Can [citizen reporting] be a new way of doing journalism? Can we reinvent ourselves? he asked. Technology is giving us that opportunity. In the remotest parts of the country, I go to any village in India, and I find at least half a dozen mobile phones. Each phone can broadcast and become its own radio station, he said.

Can we connect that radio station which is there in every pocket with our newsrooms? It is doable. It is possible. We should be doing more of it. We should be using more of this technology if we want to remain relevant, he said.

Jennifer Dorrohis a senior program director at ICFJ.

Main image CC-licensed by Unsplash viaChristina @ wocintechchat.com.

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How to promote diversity in coverage and in the newsroom - IJNet

The nationwide protests for racial justice impacted several local cities in Palm Beach County.The tension is still there; its a movement, not a moment, says activists, members of various communities, and elected officials. A task force formed to help solve racial inequities might be a potential huge step within the proverbial movement.

The Stronger Together march in Riviera Beach called for economic and political empowerment, interracial unity, alleviation of food deserts and affordable housing. The protest staged outside of a Lake Worth Beachs city commission meeting urged commissioners to consider a symbolic renaming of Dixie Highway.

You turn to WLRN for reporting you can trust and stories that move our South Florida community forward. Your support makes it possible. Please donate now. Thank you.

Young demonstrators in West Palm Beach, who marched in the scorching summer heat with their masks and bright signs, demanded policies aimed at economic equality and police reform countywide, tax-paying residents rallied for actionable plans and timelines.

Community organizers say they want to be involved and make elected officials accountable for their actions, and inactions, for whichever policy-driven plan is presented to the public.

West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James discuss the city's Task Force For Racial And Ethnic Equality with WLRN's Wilkine Brutus

As a response to the ongoing protests, West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James has created a citywide task force for racial and ethnic equality to identify and address stark racial disparities related to education, wealth, income, housing, poverty, and police reform. He also said he eventually wants the young women and men who took to the streets to have a say in the process.

James said as a Black mayor in West Palm Beach, he felt it was incumbent on him to grasp the moment and see what we can do in terms of making our city a more just city.

He told WLRN, creating the task force was also a way to address the unyielding poverty rate, which, in 2018, stood at 17 percent, according to that years West Palm Beach Economic Development Study. James believes "that there's some systemic causes for that.

The task force includes the Black Chamber of Commerce, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, State Attorney's Office, subject matter experts within subcommittees, and other leaders appointed by the mayors office.

Here's an excerpt of the mayor's conversation with WLRN, which has been edited for length and clarity.

KEITH JAMES: So we're going to have up to 17 members of the task force itself. And what is consistent from the earlier executive order is that we will have five pillars to really drill down deep into some substantive areas, including education, housing, health care, economics, criminal justice. And I wanted to get a very broad variety of individuals, both from a diversity standpoint, gender standpoint and generational standpoint. I'm intentional about bringing some of those young people who were out on the streets marching and protesting to enter the room. So they are also at the table.

West Palm Beach is still a city in the south. And if you as we dig into its history and we're going to spend a lot of time in those conversations that we do as we dig into the history of West Palm Beach, we will note that our community, as other communities in the South and maybe even around the nation, has not always been at its best when it comes to racial matters.

And so I want the committee to spend time understanding the history, as ugly as it may be, but having those tough, difficult conversations with this very diverse group of accomplished individuals to make sure that we grasp the true history of our city. Because if we sugarcoat that, if we try to just brush that under the rug, I don't think that the committee will be able to do its job to its fullest capability.

WLRN: Is the current mood in the air forcing cities and counties to shift some of their focus and money to racial equity?

Its more than a moment, its a movement. I wanted to take advantage of the platform that I have as an African-American mayor to see what I could do to engage in a conversation. I conducted a town hall shortly after a lot of the demonstrations and the protest began included Congresswoman Lois Frankel, Patrick Franklin, head of the Urban League, and some other notable individuals in our community. And that was very well received. But I knew that was not enough. I said, "What else can I do to capture this moment in time to make sure that we don't lose this moment and that it doesn't just wither away?"

Once the recommendations come out of this task force, how would the public have access to that information?

So there will be a published report. But also one of the things that we want to come out of the task force work are specific policy recommendations that could then be brought to the commission and debated and discussed.

This is certainly I think it's more than a movement. It's a moment. And I think ... as a mayor of this city, I felt it incumbent upon me to grasp the moment and see what we can do in terms of making our city a more just city.

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After Weeks Of Protests, West Palm Beach Creates Task Force To Address Racial And Ethnic Equality - WLRN

Editor's note: The following is a guest article from Charla Griffy-Brown, PhD, Professor of Information Systems and Technology Management at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.

Over the past month, major companies, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Morgan Stanley, announced they would permit large numbers of employees to work from home on a long term or permanent basis.

The practice of extended or indefinite work-from-home is growing. Twitter and Square's CEO, Jack Dorsey, along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently notified employees of a permanent work from home policy.Many other tech companies followed suit.

Perhaps less surprising, the acceptance of working remotely is also strongly supported by employees. A recent Gallup poll showed 59% of U.S. workers who moved to remote work on account of the pandemic indicated they would like to continue working from home even after the COVID-19 crisis ends.

Tens of thousands of workers who were once unfamiliar with video conferencing have, in a few short months, achieved expertise. They will naturally keep using these technologies and likely incorporate them into the post-COVID-19 business norm.

What are the potential opportunities for diversity, equity, and inclusion? Can we leverage this shift not only for creating stronger more economically robust communities but also to create stronger businesses with healthier employees?

With that in mind, here are five factors driving work from home arrangements that point to opportunities for community building and employee arrangements that have potential for addressing problems the pandemic unveiled in stark reality: unhealthy work/life habits and the need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion.

There is a collective, growing mindset supercharging the adoption of digital technologies. This will go beyond traditional technology adoption and be seen most starkly geographically as some trends slowly reverse.

For example, Richard Florida coined the term "superstar" metropolitans,places where ambitious and skilled people feel they need to be.

But in recent years, metropolitans benefiting from tech centralization source of much of their wealth have faced the "new urban crisis."

Riddled with affordability and quality of life issues, now coupled with a psychology of social distancing that will leave a shadow as people reexamine risk and family-life differently.

Affordable housing is more available in remote locations and the digital infrastructure required to reliably work from home is stronger.

Traditionally, people move to cities because cities are job hubs. But cities have become unaffordable and create economic hardship for millions of people.

Now with companies welcoming a remote workforce, cities, suburban and rural areas are set to dramatically change. At one point in April, Americans were relocating at twice the pace they did a year earlier, a trend that continued into mid-May,according to data firm Cuebiq.

Future job growth will not hinge on working in an office. According to Brookings,more than one-third of the nation's digital services job growth in the last decade was concentrated in five metro areas: New York, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and San Jose, California.

The success of a few large metropolises created geographic inequality and bottlenecks in economic growth in other areas.

Personal wealth growing opportunities will be more balanced. By creating a remote workforce, the U.S. can expand economic wealth and the digital potential for communities that have been "left behind."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that increased adoption of online tools and digital services for businesses across rural American could add $140 billion to the U.S. economy and create more than 360,000 jobs.

The opportunity gap will close between the tech elites and tech novices. With higher-wage jobs moving toward permanent remote work, the U.S. moves away from "superstar" metropolitans decentralizing tech across the nation and fostering new tech jobs.

Remote work impacts how society connects, opening up a broader attack surface and increasing the need for cyber-physical security.

Boards and executives should put together "innovation strike-forces" within their organizations to reimagine their future products, services, and how they will do business.

This rapid shift could be a magnitude change, if anticipated and supported through infrastructure growth, including investments in education and services, and intentional corporate efforts to address long-standing equity issues.

Though COVID-19 brought tremendous negative impacts, it also left little choice for workers to adjust to a new, digital normal.

The new digital transformation is not only creating new product/service variations, but leadership, operations and organizational design is also being transformed.

This means that digital leadership, including command/control, is being reinvented.Operations and infrastructure can now be completely decoupled from geography to more efficiently execute delivering new value to stakeholders, including employees.

Industry faces the opportunity for both leadership and employees to develop new skill sets and ask deeper questions regarding employee health, productivity, how to create broader diversity, equity and inclusion which could fuel increased top-line and bottom-line corporate growth.

To achieve these goals we should collectively ask better questions such as:

As the U.S. begins to recover and develop a new "normal," the vibrant tech titans of the U.S. and business leaders have a unique opportunity to recognize the concentration of prosperity and invest in a more stable future across a larger geography with broader diversity, equity, and inclusion.

COVID-19 has given us perspective, and together we have the opportunity to create a future worth wanting.

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A remote workforce, urban exodus and opportunities emerging from the pandemic - CIO Dive

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Published August 3rd, 2020 at 1:45 PM

Glass barriers. Metal gates. Visible security cameras.

Ostensibly, each of these things is meant to make a building safer. Theyre often put in place after a crime is committed nearby, designed as deterrents for any future crime. But why do we see these measures more often in minority communities?

Thats what Lisa Middlebrook wondered, except her question focused on post offices. Middlebrook, who is an anti-racist educator, moved from a majority White neighborhood to a majority Black neighborhood. The post office in her new neighborhood on Troost Avenue had a feature her old one did not glass panes that separated customers from postal workers.

To better understand the original curiousKC question, we decided to look at how security measures are implemented and why theyre so prevalent in communities of color.

Daniel Serda, a city planner who specializes in community design, development and historic preservation, said theres a deep history behind these barriers.

In many minority neighborhoods, there is much more perception of crime than there is real crime, Serda said. And theres also much more misperception of crime.

Serda said people not only tend to believe theres more crime in a neighborhood than actually exists but they also tend to believe that certain types of crime occur more often. Part of that, he said, has to do with media coverage. For instance, because some media cover homicides every time they happen, communities think homicides happen more often than other crimes.

Perception is rarely in line with reality, he said. The media plays a big part in reinforcing that bias.

As a result, people associate violent crime with the community in which they happen, which increases their fear of being victimized in that community, according to a report by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

The presence of certain security measures can be a reflection of the misapprehension of certain types of crimes happening, Serda said.

Security measures such as metal bars, glass barriers and security cameras can then lead to mistrust and confusion among community members. Even though one person involved in a business may feel a barrier was necessary, others might not feel the same way.

For the average member of the public, seeing bulletproof glass between you and the clerk is probably not the most reassuring thing, Serda said. You wonder, whats going on here, or why am I being perceived as a threat?

But when you live in an area with security barriers for most of your life, that becomes normalized.

Wanda Taylor, the corporate secretary for the 49/63 Coalition and former president of the Troostwood Neighborhood Association, lives near Troost Avenue. She said when it comes to barriers like the ones at the post office, its hard to tell that somethings not right.

A part of living in a place for a long time, certain things just become normal, until you start looking at it, Taylor said. When you dont know what the other side looks like, you dont know that something is abnormal. Thats the danger sometimes in implicit bias, because people on either side, their reality is their reality.

White flight, where White people relocated to the suburbs in order to leave racially diverse, urban areas, left a lasting economic impact on minority communities. Businesses reduced investment in urban areas as White customers moved, and many havent returned.

Taylor said when you travel along Troost disinvestment is on full display. She pointed to the abandoned buildings that line the street, boarded up while waiting for new tenants, while new businesses pop up in other areas of town.

Underneath all of that, the reality is that these neighborhoods are looking at decades, generations of disinvestment, Serda said.

Ongoing disinvestment created issues such as food deserts, where grocery stores pulled out of urban areas in favor of the suburbs. Urban areas could be profitable for grocers, but theyre still reluctant to return.

Serda said that when asking businesses why they wont relocate to these neighborhoods now, they often cite security concerns.

If they open up (a business) and you know theyve got a metal screen, and two-inch thick bulletproof glass, it doesnt matter who you are, thats going to send a message, he said.

Serda pointed to a trend in New York during the 70s when street crimes such as pickpocketing and theft were common. In response, many businesses began implementing aggressive security measures like roll-down gates over their storefronts.

It was not unusual, even in the 80s and 90s, youd be walking along after five oclock, and there were these weird metal screen garage doors pulled down in front of all the businesses, he said. Sometimes, you couldnt even see that they were businesses.

In the 90s, economic development professionals began advocating against the measures because they create the perception that an area isnt safe.

They started pushing this argument that this is actually very alienating to the public, and its questionable whether it actually increases security, Serda said. What it tends to do is reinforce identity in certain areas and perception of those areas.

In an effort to make the area more attractive to customers, they began to pay businesses to take down the more extreme security measures. This initiated a shift from metal screens to more subtle features we see now, such as thick glass and cameras.

Serda said that in recent years the security of public buildings has been influenced by changing firearm regulations. Most major public buildings now have some kind of security measure, such as metal detectors, physical barriers and cameras.

The New York Times reported that in Kansas, lawmakers voted to allow concealed firearms in public buildings but granted an exemption. Communities can ban concealed firearms so long as they put security measures such as metal detectors in place. Laws like this force cities and counties to either invest in those measures, a costly endeavor, or permit concealed firearms.

Public spaces, by their nature, are required to be open to everyone. Because of that, Serda said, those spaces consciously had to redesign their security measures with the deregulation of concealed carry.

Additionally, security features in private businesses are spurred by a reaction to a perceived threat the business owner has seen reports of crimes in the media, or there was a crime near their business.

In public spaces, cue the post offices Middlebrook noticed, these features tend to be more intentional. Public institutions often have handbooks guiding their design. In the architects handbook for building post offices, for example, its stipulated that security features must be unobtrusive. But it lacks specific guidance on what unobtrusive means, so theres still room for individual variation in different communities.

Municipal and federal buildings are guided much more by specific design guidelines, he said. But there are people internally helping shape those decisions.

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Why are security measures heightened in some KC neighborhoods and not others? - Flatland

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This is the first in an occasional series spotlighting faith-based communities in Sumter, Clarendon and Lee County with a focus on how the congregation and its leaders are reacting and adjusting to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first week Alice Drive Baptist Church elected to not have in-person services due to the coronavirus pandemic was on March 22. When it resumed in-person services on May 31 following the implementation of social distancing, disinfecting and cleansing guidelines, the Rev. Clay Smith said attendance was about half of what it would be pre-coronavirus.

However, with the spike in positive coronavirus cases and deaths in the weeks following, in-person numbers dipped.

"That has fallen off now to about 20% to 25% of a normal crowd," Smith said. "We think a small percentage of that is just summer stuff, but the much larger is that people are still uncomfortable coming to a large public gathering. We have the benefit of being able to arrange our chairs where the rows are 6 feet apart, and we've got it about as socially distanced as we can. But still we recognize that there are some who just aren't comfortable coming back yet.

"Essentially, some of it is older people, and some of it is families with young children, and some of it is just people that if they get sick - they're self-employed - then they wouldn't be able to work. So that just puts them in a difficult position, and they just don't want to take any chances."

That hasn't deterred the church itself from limiting its worship services, though. The Loring Mill Road church is still having three Sunday morning services as well as a Monday service, while its Pocalla campus on Bethel Church Road is having two Sunday services.

Smith said the biggest combined number upon return to in-person services was 730, whereas the typical number is 1,500. And while those numbers have dropped off, Smith doesn't think that has come because of a state of fear.

"I honestly feel that it's shifted somewhat," Smith said. "I think at first people had a lot of fear, and now people are more like, 'We need to be wise, and we're really ready for this to be over.' Most of our people, they're not rattled by it. They really are walking in faith, I would say."

While the number of people coming to the church is obviously down, Smith said the tithes and offerings to the church have remained strong.

"We have been extraordinarily blessed," he said. "Our people have continued to give, and we're within 5% of our giving projection goal.

"It shows some good, spiritual maturity on their part, that they're not just thinking about church as just what's in it for me, but they're recognizing this is a time where they want to lean in and say, 'We want to be generous for what our church is doing and continue to support our ministries.'"

When the in-person services were stopped, many churches turned to online and social media options. Fortunately for Alice Drive, it was already well-versed in producing services online.

"We had already been doing online, and we actually hired a part-time online minister to do that for us," Smith said. "So we're really thankful God led us in that direction because we didn't have to scramble at the last minute to try to figure out how to do it."

As one might expect, the numbers of those participating online have increased dramatically. Prior to the shutdown, Smith said the church had an average of about 350 devices linked to the services. Since then, it is between 1,000 and 1,200 on a Sunday.

The good thing, Smith said, is it's not just locals watching the services.

"What's amazing is I know of a couple of situations where some smaller churches, like in Oklahoma and Florida that have not reopened, they have some family connections, so they're watching us online, which is just like amazing to me," Smith said. "We have a thing that shows you the geographic cluster, and there's like 20 devices in northeast Oklahoma that watch us every Sunday."

Smith said he knows the church is being watched by those living overseas, as well, and that's likely due to the church's military connections with Shaw Air Force Base.

"That's really humbling," Smith said of the services being viewed in countries such as England, Afghanistan and Qatar.

Along with the Sunday and Monday services, Alice Drive also has student meetings outdoors on Wednesdays and also holds small "life groups" meeting in person and via Zoom, as well.

Smith doesn't see any increase in services at the church happening at this time.

"Right now, we're probably going to stay right where we are, and we're just looking for signs that the infection rate goes down and the death rate goes down," Smith said. "And at that point, then we'll probably consider moving back to having Sunday morning groups. But right now, putting people in small rooms in small groups may not be the wisest thing for us."

As people deal with the pandemic and other issues, such as movements against systemic racism and racial injustice, taking place in the country, Smith thinks being connected with the Lord is imperative.

"People need to be responsible for caring for their whole soul," he said. "So they need to be wise about how they take care of their body, but they also need to be nurturing that spiritual relationship they have with the Lord. This is a time to really stay connected to a church or get connected to a church, get connected to whatever gives you some spiritual hope. And that has to be something that right now is intentional because there is just so much going on that wants to rob us of our hope."

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Church amid COVID-19: Alice Drive Baptist's readiness for online services connects families across the world - Sumter Item