Convening, Recruiting, and Connecting People Who Repair Local Economies
Sometimes, whether I want it to or not, my years in Texas show up. My pick-up truck, my country radio station, and my constant attempts to recreate the boot scootin’* I did at West Fraternal Auditorium through two degrees at Baylor give me away. I have added pink decals to my truck and sometimes turn […]
Mixed Income Neighborhood Trusts, or MINTS, were a brand new concept three years ago, but Trust Neighborhoods has quickly grown from two buildings in one city to 170 residences in five cities. MINTS are a rare economic justice innovation that found the right inflection point in the system at just the right point to halt […]
“Money is the key to end all your woes, your ups your downs, your highs and your lows. When’s the last time that love bought your clothes? It’s like that and that’s the way it is!”Run DMC “I don’t know what they want from me, it’s like the more money we come across, the more […]
Trinity Christian College in Chicago is making real progress in creating a system of funding higher education that does not leave students burdened with tens of thousands of dollars of debt that, unlike business or personal debt, cannot be eliminated by filing bankruptcy. College President Aaron Kuecker used a cup of coffee to transform the […]
It seems that sometimes the history of what the Church has done in times of struggle gets overlooked. We seem to get lost in personalities and political agendas that move us away from who we, the Church, are in society. The Church has a long history of stepping into spaces and representing well. I think […]
Note: Perhaps this isn’t 100% factual, but it IS a very true story. And I think it speaks to the work we are trying to do at Neighborhood Economics. Sharing this story feels risky because it is told from the vantage point of a single person (me!), and the way all the dots connect it […]
The influential Aspen Institute has decided that the goal of their Future of Wealth initiative is to see Black family wealth grow ten-fold over the next twenty-five years. This would bridge a significant chunk out of the racial wealth gap; the average white family has 10x the assets of the average Black family. Aspen’s grounding […]
Kevin Jones We’ve raised a year of operating capital to launch The Watershed Fund, https://emsdcmarketplace.org/donations/watershed-fund/ which offers zero interest loans to local farmers serving our farm-to-table sector in Asheville. The connections and reciprocity within our food systems are already proving to be one of the surprising benefits. With the Watershed Fund, https://neighborhoodeconomics.org/wiki/index.php/Initial_design_of_the_Watershed_Fund what we are […]
Dignity is defined as being worthy of respect or honor. I often hear that everyone is deserving dignity at some level. It seems like a fairly understandable concept, but the practice of respecting people seems to be something that is pretty difficult to apply. It seems to be hardest to apply when it comes to […]
Kevin Jones The Neighborhood Economics model of bringing a national focus to local issues was in high focus in Jackson, Mississippi at our April conference. I want to tell you about one of the most exciting things that came out of our conference. Because of white flight and the city’s problems, developers had stopped building […]