Just when the world needs it most, a new style of social
engagement is emerging: Active
Citizenship.
A key member of one of New
York’s most civic-minded families—one that has
supported many of America’s notable institutions and
deserving programs—Jonathan Tisch has devoted a lifetime to
“active citizenship.” It’s an idea that uses the power of
practical creativity and grassroots participation to solve
seemingly intractable problems. In
Citizen You, Tisch
challenges readers to join this movement and points the way
toward making our world a better place, one person and one
neighborhood at a time.
Tisch has filled
Citizen You with accounts of
people who you’ll meet, such inspirational individuals as:
Scott Harrison, who has used the networking and
marketing skills he developed as a night club promoter
to help over a million people in the developing world get
access for the first time to clean, safe drinking
water.
Steffi Coplan, whose Broadway2Broadway project
brought out the hidden musical talents of kids at an
inner city school.
Eric Schwarz, who decided to do
something about America’s under-performing schools, and
parlayed a single classroom mentoring project into the
nationwide Citizens Schools movement.
Chris Swan, who
is training a new generation of “citizen engineers” to make
sure that the projects they build aren’t just structurally
sound but also environmentally and socially sustainable.
Dave Nelson, who traded his role as an executive at
IBM for a job at a struggling nonprofit that teaches kids
about the power of entrepreneurship—and discovered a host of
new challenges and rewards in the process.
Through
these and many other remarkable stories, you’ll learn
how today’s active citizens are transforming
thinking about social change. Rather than short-term
fixes and hand-me-down charity, they’re striving to build
sustainable, systemic solutions to our most challenging
problems, building and empowering communities rather than
fostering dependency. And they’re using a host of new
tools, from online networking and private-public
partnerships to corporate engagement and social
entrepreneurship, to redefine how change can happen.
Citizen You is a potent antidote to pessimism. At a
time of unprecedented challenges on the national and world
stage, when active citizenship is not a choice but a
necessity,
Citizen You dares us to reshape the
social, political, and intellectual structures that have
long confined us, and offers fresh thinking that redefines
the very concept of activism. For more information and ideas
about how to be an active citizen go to www.citizenyou.org
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