Graduate students in dentistry get course credit for cleaning poor children's teeth free of charge. A Harvard graduate student interning with me wrote the successful state legislation that created Cambridge's Affordable Housing Trust. That program has produced several thousand units of affordable housing and has been widely copied. 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.