Initiatives Overview
The Global ARC believes that in order to achieve its vision of a world of healthy sustainable communities where people work together and life flourishes, we must have the members of our various communities engaged in the sustainable development of their respective communities. The Global ARC engages educators, researchers, scientists, professionals, students and community organizers in identifying and/or developing the most effective approaches and strategies for community building, community engagement, community organizing, and community development. The Global ARC will also facilitate bidirectional learning between community members who are involved in improving community conditions, and educational institutions who also want to contribute to community improvement.
Sustainability Database
The Global ARC's Sustainability database enables knowledge networking among researchers, community-based organizations, planners, social entrepreneurs and other groups who are trying to improve quality of life and place for the common good. The database is designed for sharing challenges and solutions that: (1) promote healthy and sustainable development, and (2) energize community-based creativity and innovation through civically-engaged research, open dialog, social learning and collective problem solving. An important feature of the database is its integrative “connect-the-dots” design; it enables participants to learn from and cross-fertilize diverse perspectives. The database interlinks eight areas of concentration (food, water, land, energy, built environment, economy, communications, and human development).
Environment and Health
The rapid growth of humanity’s ecological footprint has made our species a globally transformative force that undermines prospects for a healthy and sustainable future. Globalization, poverty, and low-density urban sprawl have combined in ways that make traditional planning and policy approaches problematic. The Global ARC integrates concerns about the environment and health by helping improve science-society relations through community engagement, and by conducting proof of concept projects that reconcile and coordinate the activities of regional planners, managers, politicians, business and community groups in support of sustainability. The Global ARC seeks effective ways to integrate long standing as well as emergent concepts of justice (e.g., social justice, environmental justice, food justice) into research and action for the common good.
Research and Evaluation
The Global ARC’s approach to research is rooted in its understanding that healthy, sustainable communities require organized, knowledgeable and engaged residents. It utilizes a Participatory Action Research approach to support communities in developing the knowledge and tools necessary to articulate and address the issues of importance to them. The Global ARC uses evaluation as a tool for supporting the development of learning organizations that have the capacity to extract and integrate lessons from their ongoing efforts. It is committed to publishing the findings of its research and evaluations in a manner that is useful to community residents, community organizers, educators, researchers, foundations and policy makers.
Community Engagement and Development
The Global ARC believes that in order to achieve its vision of a world of healthy sustainable communities where people work together and life flourishes, we must have the members of our various communities engaged in the sustainable development of their respective communities. The Global ARC engages educators, researchers, scientists, professionals, students and community organizers in identifying and/or developing the most effective approaches and strategies for community building, community engagement, community organizing, and community development. The Global ARC will also facilitate bidirectional learning between community members who are involved in improving community conditions, and educational institutions who also want to contribute to community improvement.
Knowledge Commons
The knowledge needed to achieve The Global ARC's vision comes from many places. It emerges from our communities in the form of promising practices; from our universities in the form of theory and from our institutions in the form of policy. The Knowledge Commons brings these forms of knowledge together so we can learn from each other and create synergies that moves a progressive agenda forward.