Richard
Harwood *84’s organization has helped develop community
leaders in Flint, Mich. (Courtesy Richard Harwood *84)
Getting
people to work together
Richard Harwood *84 inspires civic engagement
After
working on 23 political campaigns by the time he was 23, Richard
Harwood *84 decided he was sick of politics as usual. “For
the life of me, I couldn’t understand why yet another campaign
was about dividing people, striking fear into their hearts and manipulating
people,” says Harwood, who had been working on Walter Mondale’s
1984 presidential campaign.
In 1988, against the advice of nearly everyone he knew, the then-27-year-old
Woodrow Wilson School graduate with a master’s in public affairs
started a one-man consulting firm that would eventually grow to
become the Harwood Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated
to inspiring a new civic-mindedness in leaders, the media, and communities.
“We are told [by public officials and the media] that we
are divided between red and blue states, so there is a narrative
of division that has taken over the country,” Harwood says.
“I don’t think we are really that divided. If leaders,
for instance, were willing to step forward and talk about real issues
and lay out a plan and call for people to make sacrifices, they
would.”
Today Harwood’s Bethesda, Md.-based organization develops
civic-minded organizations, runs education programs, and conducts
research in cities around the country to rejuvenate civic leaders.
In Flint, Mich., for example, the institute has worked with community
members and leaders since 1995 — shepherding them through
nine-month seminars and helping strengthen community networks and
civic organizations. The institute doesn’t dictate change,
but tries to help community members articulate their aspirations
and concerns. “People have the capacity to solve their own
problems,” says Harwood. “We help them create the right
conditions to do that.”
The effort seems to be working. Seven new community organizations
have formed in Flint since 1997, and the number of residents the
community has identified as “leaders” has jumped from
just seven to 27. These community members are addressing a number
of areas: creating more affordable housing, developing new after-school
programs, working to create a job-training program, and trying to
improve race relations. The new leaders are working together, says
Harwood. “That really helps move a community forward.”
In other cities, Harwood has worked with reporters and editors
of major newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, helping
them develop the mind-set to report and write stories without a
preconceived slant and to discover what is important to community
members. In a low-income St. Louis neighborhood, education reporters
often quote residents responding for or against what the school
board is doing — as if they are spectators of what happens
in their community instead of active participants. That type of
coverage implies that residents are “powerless and simply
victims of the school board,” says Harwood. A better approach,
he says, would be to ask people what they want for their schools.
Some reporters and editors he’s worked with have been receptive,
says Harwood. But others have been “tremendously resistant
to change,” he says, because his approach goes against conventions
and habits of many journalists.
