Twice a year, I return to my hometown, near the Black Hills of South Dakota to see my mom. It allows some time to take stock of my personal and professional life. Last year, I wrote four blogs around the topic of “Weaving a Community” in greater Detroit. This year I am intrigued about the concept of progress and generational change.  

Join me in visiting Chadron, a community of 5,000. Its history intersects with Buffalo Bill, Crazy Horse and Custer. The sky continues forever and a starry night in any season is the eighth wonder of the world. My world consisted of a loving and supportive family combined with many friends. My folks were first generation Arab-Americans in a sea of German-Americans. 

The civic glue in the 1950s was a sense of community with strong personal involvement in a region of 12,000-acre ranches. Instead of the Big 3 we had the forestry service, many small service businesses and the college. Instead of the DIA we had the Museum of the Fur Trade celebrating the French founding and settling of the area. Instead of the Fox Theater or Orchestra Hall we had the community concert series allowing rural America to see plays and concerts at the high school gym or college center. Instead of professional sports teams we had high school and Division III college games. Instead of city-sponsored neighborhood watch programs we had neighbors who cared for each other and their kids and demonstrated their commitment in little and big ways. 

The successful community recipe for most families included a strong faith in education to shape a better world. Try to imagine my class of eighteen students, who had to participate in all sports, sing in the choir or play in the band, and take industrial arts all on the campus via faculty with dual appointments in both college and secondary settings. 

I fully realize that urban and rural America have historic differences. Institutional racism continues to prevent the full participation of many people in the civic culture. Having said that, I lament that most events dealing with social problems, in Detroit such as the Race Summit sponsored by New Detroit or the Poverty Forum, mostly include representatives of formal organizations and tend to ‘preach to the choir’. The thread that worked in my community, at an earlier time in America, was the informal ownership of civic culture by citizens. 

During the past 50 years that ownership has been deferred to more formal organizations in both the public and nonprofit sectors for a variety of reasons. The unintended consequence of this action is that neighborhoods and communities have lost their civic muscle. True civic engagement is required and that will only occur when the formal organizations understand their limitations. As was noted during the Bridges out of Poverty program in October, relationships trump programs every time.

I invite each of you to look at the work of the Anne E. Casey Foundation on its Web site, with a particular focus on community change and its two-generation work. As United Way reinvents itself, how can we reach the proper equilibrium of a formal organization that nurtures and maximizes the informal neighborhood fabric in our service area?