Community

We need our neighbors and community to stay healthy, produce jobs, raise our children, and care for those on the margin. Institutions and professional services have reached their limit of their ability to help us.

The consumer society tells us that we are insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside the community. We have become consumers and clients, not citizens and neighbors. John McKnight and Peter Block show that we have the capacity to find real and sustainable satisfaction right in our neighborhood and community.

This book reports on voluntary, self-organizing structures that focus on gifts and value hospitality, the welcoming of strangers. It shows how to reweave our social fabric, especially in our neighborhoods. In this way we collectively have enough to create a future that works for all.

Peter Block is an author, consultant, and thought-leader whose work focuses on the topics of empowerment, stewardship, chosen accountability, and the reconciliation of community. Peter is the author of several bestselling books, including Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, and The Empowered Manager. He is the recipient of the Organization Development Network's 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004 he received their first place Members' Choice Award, which recognized Flawless Consulting as the most influential book for OD practitioners over the past 40 years. He is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops to build the skills outlined in his books. He received a Masters Degree in Industrial Administration from Yale University and is the first Distinguished Consultant-in-Residence at Xavier University.