The growing sense of division in our country has been felt  strongly this year in conjunction with the physical separation of pandemic life and elections right around the corner. This article published on USA Today, written by David Mathews, President of Kettering Foundation, explores a narrative that is rarely reported on. USA Today networks and America Amplified, a public media collaborative, equipped with research provided by organizations including Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation want to uncover the common ground. The main findings reported demonstrate more common ground […] (continue)

This story is shared by Everyday Democracy an NCDD member organization, who participated in a nationwide virtual conference on the criminal justice system. The conference was hosted by The Safety and Justice Challenge and gave way for in-depth exploration at educational, networking, and dialogic solutions to the criminal system, and specifically jail reform. EvDem has been providing community engagement technical assistance to the Safety and Justice Challenge since 2018 and was honored to moderate an exchange session at the virtual convening.  In the session, EvDem […] (continue)

Earlier this morning, one of our great NCDD organizational members, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, launched an online crowdfunding campaign to support the important work of Text, Talk, Act (TTA) – an amazing youth dialogue program that gets young people talking and taking action around the difficult issue of mental health – and we want to encourage our members to support the effort! TTA is one of the most successful programs to have come out of the Creating Community Solutions (CCS) initiative that the White House launched in 2013 as […] (continue)

We want to share an update on Text, Talk, Act – the youth mental health conversation initiative launched in 2013 by NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions – that we saw on NCDD organizational member the Public Conversations Project‘s blog. They featured a piece by Nancy Goodman reflecting on the what was discussed in the TTA conversation she facilitated with high school teens, and it gives a great glimpse into how TTA works and how powerful these dialogues are. We encourage you to read Nancy’s piece below or find the original […] (continue)

In case you missed our previous post, we want to remind you again that Text, Talk, Act  is back! This April and May, thousands of people, especially young people, will have a nationwide conversation on mental health and how to help a friend in need, and you should join! Here’s how it works: Through text messaging, small groups will receive discussion questions to lead them through a conversation about mental health – how to take care of their own and how to help a friend in […] (continue)

We are happy to announce that Text, Talk, Act – the youth mental health conversation initiative launched in 2013 by NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions – is returning with two nationwide events this spring! As most of you know, TTA has been supported by NCDD since early on, and it has already shown a lot of encouraging results in past iterations. This next round of conversations has two different dates and promises to be the best one yet! The first date is Tuesday, April 14th in partnership with Active Mind’s Stress Less […] (continue)

We wanted to share the great news that last month, the Creating Community Solutions Alliance received the International Association of Public Participation’s USA Project of the Year Core Value Award. NCDD is one of six organizations that make up the core CCS alliance — including the National Institute for Civil Discourse (the lead partner), Everyday Democracy, the National Issues Forums Institute, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and AmericaSpeaks. Creating Community Solutions won for its work in bringing people to the table for the national dialogue on mental health […] (continue)

Join organizers of the award-winning #TextTalkAct in a live video chat hosted by @DocForeman tomorrow (Tuesday, November 18th) at 6:30 pm Eastern / 3:30 pm Pacific. Hear what happened during our national Text Talk Act contest on October 6. We’ll connect you with: Winning youth organizers; Ideas texted in by participants across the country; Resources for taking action. To participate, simply click on this link on Tuesday, Nov 18 at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time. You’ll be connected to the live streaming video on YouTube that […] (continue)

We are so pleased to announce that the Text, Talk, Act mental health conversation is returning, this time with a great contest element. TTA is part of the NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions initiative, and we highly encourage our members, especially those of you who work with youth, to consider hosting your own conversations! Learn more below or visit www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/texttalkact. One in four adults suffer from this in any given year. If it were cancer, diabetes or heart disease, we’d label it an epidemic. The once silent killer […] (continue)

We recently received a newsletter from NCDD supporting member Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC), and we wanted to share it with you. The DDC has been working on some important and exciting projects, and they have 3 big announcements. First, the DDC has released a significant new white paper: Infogagement: Citizenship and Democracy in the Age of Connection is the latest white paper from PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement). Written by the DDC’s Matt Leighninger, the report – downloadable here – […] (continue)