Another volunteer wrote the city's recycling law. People who work in banks and businesses, state, local, and federal government, and nonprofit agencies contribute to affordable housing. Inspiration comes from clergy and volunteers from religious communities. Parents band together to serve on school improvement councils and in parent-teacher associations. Volunteer citizens lend their expertise to candidates for election to local and state government.
Activists lobby corporations and government to increase the quantity and quality of childcare.
Healthy communities do not wait for ugly problems to overwhelm them. Citizens take it upon themselves to find the answers. Government alone cannot command solutions to any problems. A community's human resources build its future. What I have tried to describe to you today is how one city, in all its complexity and diversity, has struggled and continues to work to surmount its problems.