Two Days. Fifty Passionate Change Agents. One Community Moving Forward.
Residents in Reading are proud to call their community home, but with significant growth and changing demographics, they are wrestling with profound equity challenges. Once a predominantly White working-class community, the community is now 61% Hispanic with residents from more than five Latin American countries. Real divides hold the community back—between public institutions and civic groups, between neighborhoods with varying economic health, and among people in how they talk and work together. In 2021, Centro Hispano partnered with The Harwood Institute with the support of the Walton Family Foundation to help the community create a greater sense of shared purpose so that every young person and family has equitable access to education and can participate in the American dream.
Wins From the Beginning
The Reading community has already seen wins from this work. They created the shared education agenda, Reading Thriving Together: A New Agenda for Education and the Community, at a time when national debates around education signaled nothing but division. They stepped forward and expressed a deep desire to work together and make good on the agenda by identifying three items to move on right away. Catalyzed by this initial energy, four local partners, including Centro Hispano, United Way of Berks County, The Wyomissing Foundation, and Berks Alliance, created a coalition to lead the way forward, funding the project on their own. And in early July, fifty passionate change agents joined Rich Harwood and the team for a two-day Public Innovators Lab. Although this work is just beginning, residents in Reading are demonstrating proof that by changing how they work together, they can transform their community.
Action-Oriented and Ready to Go
Of the nine agenda items outlined in the education and community agenda, the Reading community identified English as a second language, early childhood education, and after- and out-of-school programs to move forward on first. For months the coalition worked together to find action-oriented individuals from different sectors, inviting fifty community members to attend the first of two Harwood Public Innovators Labs. Almost all accepted the invitation immediately.
Working with a dynamic group of change agents from business, education, nonprofit, and religious sectors, Rich and the team strategically designed every minute of the Lab so participants would walk away with a new Turned Outward mindset, useful tools, and actionable and community-centered ideas. Through this work, the Reading community will break free from limiting narratives, unleash a chain reaction of positive actions, and strengthen the civic culture of their community with a shared sense of purpose and a can-do narrative.
“The Harwood Lab exceeded my expectations for doing high quality, insightful work to kick off our project as well as getting a large team aligned on mission. This workshop was successful at bringing together a highly diverse group many unknown to each other before the session.”
A Powerful learning Experience
Developed through over 30 years of research, innovation, and on-the-ground work with communities across the country, the Harwood Public Innovators Getting Started Lab teaches individuals who want to make a difference in their communities the fundamentals of Turning Outward. Led by Rich and our certified Harwood coaches, it is a deeply engaging space to develop and strengthen relationships with other community-driven change agents and learn how to catalyze long-term change. The Lab is intentionally designed to be both practical and energizing, making a powerful and inspiring experience of this meaningful and necessary work.
“Each session felt like a new brick in our foundation for more effective communication and action as change agents in the community. The lab left me with a new sense of reciprocal trust & understanding among participants as well as hopefulness that the best is yet to come.”
Building Relationships to Unleash Impact
Throughout the two days, there was palpable energy as participants worked together to learn the new mindsets, tools and strategies they’ll use with the larger community. And the connections didn’t stop there. Before and after the Lab, during lunch, and any free moment, participants engaged in deep discussions, exchanged contacts, and began planning how to implement these ideas right away.
During the lab, the group formed teams to spearhead the work for each agenda item. Guided by certified Harwood coaches, they will start with small, intentional actions and build from there. And they will enlist allies as they progress and others become inspired by the chain reaction of positive actions. Individually, each of these public innovators is making a difference through the work they do for Reading. But together, they will unleash the incredible capabilities of the entire community.
“I left feeling inspired, rejuvenated, and interested in looking at old challenges sideways, backwards, and upside down to find new pathways to change. ”
Over the next two years, the Harwood team will work in tandem with these change agents as they adapt what they learned in the lab, make it their own, and build upon each win as the initiative progresses. That’s how change really happens—and how it sustains over time. This is a lasting partnership that will evolve as the community strengthens its civic culture, embedding new ways of working together that will develop and deepen for years to come.
“I enjoyed that everyone expressed their concerns, issues, or community problems, but all of our goals were the same. We work hard to provide support to the families in our community, but we can work smart by working together.”
A Counterforce Powered by Community-led Change
People say that our nation is stuck and that we can’t move forward on fundamental issues in society. The Harwood Institute is working with individual communities and thousands of public innovators across the country to create a counterforce powered by community-led change. This work in Reading is part of the Institute’s strategy to go deep in a collection of communities—including Alamance County, NC, Lexington, KY, Clarksville, TN, and Jackson, MS—to show that Americans have the public will and ability to address major fault lines in society and strengthen our civic culture. Although quite different in history, demographics, and the unique challenges they face, all of these communities are moving forward. This is the counterforce in action.
Join us in amplifying the message that we don’t need to surrender to the relentless turmoil in our world today and pervasive false narratives. Getting on a more hopeful path is possible. It’s happening right now in communities like these.
