By Keith Hefner
Trustee, New York Foundation
Executive Director, Youth Communication
(from remarks delivered on October 7, 2009)
The New York Foundation believes in the quaint idea that individuals, and people working together in communities, have the ability to identify the challenges they face and the obstacles to overcoming them.
We appreciate professional expertise but we think it must be joined with the deep knowledge of community members. And we love clever ideas and solutions but we have observed that when they are proposed and executed from above they lack staying power. It is the process of organizing that helps people develop the independent capacity to analyze, take action, reflect, and change course. Imposed solutions lack the responsiveness and resiliency of grassroots change.
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