Community Problem-Solving Project - Global

The Community Problem Solving website offers free tools developed on a variety of strategy issues relevant to local problem-solving across the sectors - public, private, and nonprofit/non-governmental. The idea is to provide information - and enable exchange of resources and experience - to support learning and effectiveness in the area of community problem-solving.

Specifically, the site provides 2 main resources for learning. Strategy Tools are designed to help users approach issues and work with other stakeholders more effectively. These original materials address the challenges of organising stakeholders, building alliances that work and getting out of ones that don't, designing and managing participation in planning, coming to agreement, and the like. For example, the "Perfect Fit or Shotgun Marriage: The Power and Pitfalls in Partnerships" tool "shows how to ask--and answer--the four strategic questions that make or break partnerships." In addition to the tools themselves (many of which may be downloaded in PDF format), lists of resource lists and/or discussion fora are provided (an asterisk (*) indicates a web resource with primarily USA-based or focussed content so that users may decipher which are more international in scope).

Program Tools are designed for those who are seeking to address specific, substantive problems by learning what works and what doesn't in a given area, often through clearinghouses and exchange sites available online. These tools are divided into categories including Multi-Issue, Children and Families, Crime and Safety, Economic Development, Education, Environment, Health, Housing & CommDevt, Labor/Workforce, and Transportation.

Community Problem-solving, Democracy.

Organisers explain that at the heart of "problem-solving" work is "strategy - the set of ideas or insights that help us act smarter on hard problems, in a world of changing needs and changing rules." They describe their focus on community problem-solving, specifically, as follows: "Democracy is about creating more and more capacity to do two things, fundamentally: effectively pick important problems that we want to work on and then work on them together in just and productive ways. For a growing variety of challenging issues, much of this problem-solving capacity, though not all, must be created and put in motion at the local or 'community' level."

As of February 2007, there were (according to organisers) over 80,000 downloads of the site's Strategy Tools from around the world since launch in 2003, with users coming from government (all levels), the nonprofit/nongovernmental sector, high education, socially responsible businesses, and informal community groups. They indicate that the tools are being assigned in courses on planning, community development, local governance and democracy, community health, and other topics.