Welcome to the new All-America City Award blog!
We want this blog to be a conversation. Part of that conversation will be about the All-America City Award itself, who’s involved, what they are doing, how it is done. But equally important will be a broader conversation about civic engagement, civic innovation, inclusive community development and grassroots local problem solving.
Our goal is to make these topics as accessible as possible to the public. We want to hear about your projects, your successes and your stories of positive community change. We want to spread the word about those stories and about the All-America City Award.
The blog also will be a hub for information, pictures and video about our annual All-America City Award program. Applicants, finalists and winners—present and future—can use it to stay up to date on the latest developments in the 2010 award competition.
Here are some ways you can participate in the blog:
1) Suggest topics we could blog about. What would you like to read about, relating to communities/civic engagement?
2) Send us your stories of community change.
3) Be a guest blogger.
4) Send us your pictures or videos about your community projects and preparation for the award program at aac@ncl.org. We will showcase them on our “All-America City Story Board.”
5) Upload your pictures on Flickr, and tag them with a text “allamericacityaward” and “nationalcivicleague”. That way, we and anybody else can find those pictures too. If you have a caption for the picture, please add it on Flickr.
6) Upload your All-America story video on YouTube with the tag “AllAmericaCityAward” and “NationalCivicLeague”.
7) Send a video to us at aac@ncl.org.
8) Give us some ideas. Tell us what you would like to see us cover on this blog. Leave a comment on the site, or email us at aac@ncl.org
9) Donate to the National Civic League so it can connect problem solvers looking for new and innovative approaches to complex issues through the All-America City Award by clicking here.
Also, we are trying something new this spring. We are starting a media contest for community story telling, using video and photos that you provide. We are calling it the “All-America Story” contest, and the winners will be announced in June at the All-America City Award competition in Kansas City, Missouri. More about that soon so stay tuned!
Category: All-America City Awards, Media/Technology
I just want to say how disgusted I was when I heard that El Paso, TX was a finalist for this award. I am stationes in El Paso with the US Army and have not felt very welcome by the citizens of El Paso. This town is so open to and more favorable to the citizens of Juarez, Mexico than they are to the soldiers being stationed there. My daughter for example was almost denied at a local elementary school because they were at maximum capacity for student enrollments. She finally was allowed to go there and to my surprise there are alot of students there who come across the border to go to this school. My daughter ,an American citizen, was almost denied a spot but they had all of these foreign students filling slots. UNBELIEVABLE!!! Also, the crime is terrible. I live in off post military housing and while I was deployed to Iraq there was a shooting two houses up from where my family was.
El Paso is not at all what I would think of when I think of the All-American city. There are more illegal immigrants there than American citizens, it is full of drug problems and gang violence, and it is an absolutely filthy, horrible place to raise children. If not for the Army I would not be there and thank GOD I will be leaving there soon. I spent a year deployed to Iraq while stationed in El Paso and was not looking forward to going back there after my deployment. Whoever decides on these awards may want to take a trip to El Paso and see first hand what you made a finalist. I am quite sure that after spending a little time there you may remove them from the finalist list and never allow them to apply again.