Local Initiatives Quotes

Small groups of people can have a really huge impact.

All change starts with a distant rumble at the grassroots level.

All community development, and most economic development, happens locally

If I were asked about what to do about the level of insecurity and anxiety in contemporary Australian society, I wouldn't start with politics and I wouldn't say too much about terrorism. I'd suggest as a first step, that you invite the neighbours over for a drink this weekend. Today a drink, tomorrow a barbeque, pretty soon, a community.

The thing I learned is that the work is getting done by people who dig in and work on a particular project: the people who spend 20 years sustaining a theater for black teenagers in Chicago; the people who reintroduce sticklebacks into Strawberry Creek in Berkeley and then wait patiently for the first egrets to show up.

Real people do real things. A collective of a whole bunch of people who do things in their own locale, in their own neighborhoods - the sum is bigger than the parts, and the parts will grow.

change starts at the bottom. I think we're disempowered by the idea that it starts at the top, when really change is like a tree. It does start at the bottom.

I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.

I've seen young people raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix a problem in their community. I've seen young people raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to dig wells in Africa. I've seen young people pass laws, largely impacting their communities. They do have the power to change the world.

A lot of cities are making a real effort, neighborhood by neighborhood, to make themselves into a place where life can be pretty good.

We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.

Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.” — Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year)

For sure I would prefer Trump had not withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. But the fight against climate change is really done at the local level - whether it's cities, local governments or the private sector, corporate and individual. No matter what Trump says, nobody is going to go back and take the scrubber out or change back to polluting. The damage that Trump can do is if there are countries that are on the fence about whether they want to address the issue, this gives the naysayers, the doubters, those that don't want to do anything, a little more ammunition.

The most important thing you need to make one of those incubator/accelerator type projects work is to have some people who understand how to do it and want to do it in a particular place.

It is very important for young people not to be afraid of engaging in areas that are not common to the youth. Get involved in local activities, get involved in local initiatives, be involved in leadership positions because you can’t learn unless you are involved. And if you make mistakes that is alright too because we all make mistakes and we learn from those mistakes. You gain confidence from learning, failing and rising again.

When real substantive change happens it's the people who watch your show, they're the ones that make it happen. It's people whose names are not highlighted in history books. They're the ones that stand up in their place and time to make change.

I've been most happy to be an advocate for the kinds of grassroots things that people are doing who care about poetry.

There are people in communities who are actually out there fighting poverty eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul, in neighborhoods that actually do well, that succeed. But for government, I think in many cases, they could do more.

It's not in the mainstream media, but across towns, it is amazing how there are small groups of people getting together and forming artistic collectives - they may not be being overtly political, but I'd say by channelling their energy into community projects, that's a valid political statement.

Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.

What you need if you want jobs are small and medium sized enterprises, local initiatives, labour intensive work, community development, service providers and the like.

A Midwestern municipal government isn't the first thing that leaps to mind when you think of innovation, but it ought to be.

When I started the Imagination Library in my hometown, I never dreamed that one day we would be helping Scottish kids.

If there's a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things. The powers-that-be can break up any big thing they want. They can corrupt it or co-opt it from the inside, or they can attack it from the outside. But what are they going to do about 10 million little things? They break up two of them, and three more like them spring up!

If you want to effect change, start small.