Read the latest media coverage of the Orton Family Foundation, our Project Towns and partner organizations.
The following are the concepts of community that all of Essex can agree on, according to research conducted over the past six months by the grant-funded Heart and Soul of Essex committee: education, community connections, safety, thoughtful growth, local economy and health/recreation.
The Orton Family Foundation, in cooperation with CommunityMatters Partners, worked with Newport, VT, residents in a one-day workshop to help the community develop ways of solving problems and directing future growth and change.
The city of Cortez, Colorado is in the midst of applying the Heart & Soul process to the needs of their town. This article gives details about the challenges and benefits of the Heart & Soul approach, and concludes that the effort is well worthwhile.
Saving Land profiles Orton’s Heart & Soul Community Planning approach, citing Victor, Idaho as a success story where shared values were adopted by the City Council in 2011.
A strong outreach effort in Cortez, CO is engaging the young people of the town in planning the future of the community. This story from the Cortez Journal gives the details of how one young man has gained an active role on the Cortez city council as they steer the changes with which the town is faced.
The School Community Youth Collaborative involves Cortez teenagers in the inner workings of businesses, nonprofits and municipal agencies by bringing them into the decision-making process normally reserved for adults. SCYC hopes inter-generational bridges can be built and stereotypes broken.
This editorial considers how the Heart & Soul Approach might be applied to the challenges the writer has witnessed in the two small mountain towns of Pagosa Springs and Salida, Colorado.
Nearly 300 residents of Essex town and Essex Junction village gathered for the official launch of the Heart & Soul of Essex, a two-year, $100,000 planning initiative that’s the work of a corps of grassroots volunteers and the Vermont-based Orton Family Foundation.
After decades of debate, residents leverege funding from the Orton Family Foundation to discover the heart and soul of Essex. WCAX’s Mike McCune talks with a leaders of the Heart & Soul Community Advisory Team about trying to find common ground between all residents of Essex and Essex Junction.
Polson is one of only five communities nationwide to receive a grant to help it identify what the people of the area love about their town, and then use that information to guide future planning.