Social Well-Being

Home. The word means many different things to many different people. For some, it might be a house. For others, it might be a park bench or a tent behind a supermarket. Just as homes can take many forms, so can homelessness. I was forced to reflect on this last month, as a volunteer with […]

Will Americans continue to be suburban creatures? The question has been widely debated by developers, planners and the press since the Great Recession. Surveys showing preferences for urban, walkable, in-town neighborhoods have been called fads by some, or hailed by others as the end of suburbia. Ultimately, it will be the attitudes of the Millennial […]

The Collective Impact Baseline study is part of United Way’s pilot initiative to increase the graduation rate over the next 10 years for the community’s most vulnerable youth. This data will form the baseline against which United Way and its agencies will be measured in the goal to increase the graduation rate for at-risk children […]

Charlotte has lagged much of the country in this period of economic recovery, but the region has finally begun to see a few small signs of better days on the horizon. Over the past several months, there has been gradual improvement in the unemployment rate and home price index in the region. These bright spots […]

Amy Hawn Nelson, a Mecklenburg County educator with a strong record in improving the academic outcomes for at-risk students, has been named director of UNC Charlotte’s Institute for Social Capital. She replaces Sharon Portwood, the first director, who stepped down in December 2011 to return to full-time teaching at the university. The Institute for Social […]

Two different organizations in the Charlotte region are using borrowed land and volunteer labor to get fresh, local food on the plates of people who need it most. Sow Much Good raises vegetables to sell well below market cost in low-income neighborhoods that are far from traditional farmers markets, while Friendship Gardens, started by Slow […]

Contributor: Nancy Pierce Communities around the Charlotte region are building greenways for residents to use for walking, bicycling, hiking and even skating. The Carolina Thread Trail has played an important role in making these new pathways a growing transportation and recreation resource. The Foundation For The Carolinas helped initiate that project and The Catawba Lands Conservancy […]

The city, instead of holding its traditional spring summit conference for neighborhood groups, will offer them space and time with facilitators in July to encourage strategic goal-setting and planning. The meetings will be in Foundation For The Carolinas’ uptown meeting rooms, which can accommodate as many as 17 organizations. Trained facilitators from the city and […]

Two of UNC Charlotte’s most visible institutes are merging to create a combined center with unparalleled research capacity to address social issues in the Charlotte region. On March 8, the Institute for Social Capital (ISC) board of directors and UNC Charlotte agreed to merge the ISC staff and operations into the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, […]