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“Weavers” are a diverse group of Americans who are making quiet yet extraordinary efforts to strengthen the communities in which they live. Each of these leaders is taking on a very different challenge — be it suicide prevention, housing, urban revitalization, or immigrant rights — but they all focus foremost on the transformative power of human relationships. Learn about...
American pro sports make a lot of money. Had it not been for the pandemic, the industry in North America was projected to generate $75.7 billion per year in revenue, a tally that includes ticket sales, television contracts, concessions, and advertising. Less easy to calculate — but also significant — is the impact of sports on communities. Sports have a profoundly positive...
Community health workers bring lifesaving care to hard-to-reach locations. More than one billion people inhabit areas so remote that they lack any access to healthcare, but not too remote to trigger fast-moving epidemics. Enter community health workers, who can detect disease outbreaks, identify malnutrition and malaria, and provide basic primary care. Once operating large...
Our country’s social fabric is badly frayed by distrust, division and exclusion. But across America, people are quietly working to end loneliness and isolation and weave together inclusive communities. Meet some remarkable ordinary Americans who are “weaving” every day — swimming against the current of hyper-individualism and doing their part to put trust, empathy, connect...
More than one-third of the world’s girls and women have experienced some form of violence in their lives, leading the World Health Organization to highlight “a global health problem of epidemic proportions.” In this year of unprecedented attention to women’s safety, we are increasingly aware of their vulnerability to sexual violation, trafficking and other forms of abuse....
Intelligence is more than the gray matter sloshing around in your skull, and more than the nerves that make sense of your environment. Your mind utilizes extra-neural resources, including the perceptions and knowledge in the minds of others — so the more people you surround yourself with, the bigger your brain is. In this session, we’ll dive into the research that shows ho...
In Being Nixon, Evan Thomas peels away the layers of the complex, confounding figure who became America’s 37th president. Drawing on a wide range of historical accounts, Thomas reveals the contradictions of a leader whose vision and foresight led him to achieve détente with the Soviet Union and reestablish relations with communist China, but whose underhanded political ta...
With the power of a text message, the advice of a health worker fits in the palm of your hand. With innovative entrepreneurship, care becomes accessible where it previously was not. With the skill of a midwife, the pregnant woman in need of a champion thrives. Health systems may be complex, but what powers them is simple—the human beings at their backbone who are critical...
Rates of depression, disconnection, and suicide among today’s youth are alarming. Hear how leaders from the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions and a group of community partners — including donors and young people — are working together to help the rising generation thrive, along with insights and connections to other funding strategies and initiatives provided by the Aspe...
From San Antonio to Boston, Los Angeles to Cincinnati, and thousands of communities between, the power of place is about unearthing collective purpose and capital — and how the Aspen Institute helps build that capital. Hear from visionaries who zero in on historical traumas to rebuild trust and a sense of community, from an expert tapping new sources of capital to fuel ent...
The Aspen Challenge presents three high school teams from Louisville and one team from Dallas who developed innovative solutions to issues that have chronically impacted their communities. See these young change-makers take to the stage to prove that entrepreneurial community solutions can be created at any age. Learn how Justin F. Kimball and Central High School Magnet Ca...
In America, interpersonal trust is in decline. Less than one-third of Americans agree that most people can be trusted. Events that might have brought people together, like the shared sacrifices of the pandemic, led instead to infighting. Social trust enables us to live meaningful lives in community and peacefully solve shared problems, from racial injustice to creating job...
The challenges and opportunities of our times require creativity, agility, and purpose — from leaders and from institutions. How are some leaders of society’s most established nongovernmental organizations driving organizational change, and what are the benefits and risks of doing so?
The forces of division have been tearing America's social fabric for decades. But a new coalition of community builders with a new set of beliefs is rising to turn things around. Here's how you can help. Underwritten by Nestlé Waters North America.
A church in Denver that is at once ancient and of the future. A home-based experiment in Jewish life in Brooklyn. A Washington, DC, sacred space for artists and activists. Meet a group of leaders reimagining spiritual community for the 21st century.
The world’s young leaders are leading the charge to ensure future generations inherit a vibrant and thriving planet. Hear from inspiring leaders and changemakers, among them Indigenous youth, about the urgent work being done through innovative and inclusive solutions, activism, and community resilience.
Join the Manhattan DA for a broad-ranging conversation on his unique role as both crime fighter and community builder, and how our justice system must evolve to fight 21st century crimes such as identity theft, cybercrime, white-collar fraud, hate crimes, terrorism, domestic violence, human trafficking, and violent and gang-related crimes.
The award-winning economist Mariana Mazzucato has been called the “world’s scariest economist.” Why? She challenges us to reconsider capitalism as it exists today. Focusing on innovation-led, inclusive, and sustainable growth, Mazzucato examines the critical — and misunderstood — role that governments play in fostering innovation. Her latest book, The Value of Everything,...
Recent years have seen the wane of the threat of ISIS, even as white supremacists carry out more violent attacks across the globe, from Christchurch, New Zealand, to Charlottesville, VA. What leads someone down the path of political extremism, what causes them to become violent, and how do authorities or community leaders help stop — or reverse — extremism?
Over the past decade, levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide have increased dramatically, but the causes are more nuanced than the headlines suggest. This session unpacks the data and real-world learnings to shed light on the changes — at the policy, family, school, and community levels — that have the most potential to improve kids’ well-being.