I recently visited Puerto Rico along with NeighborWorks America Regional Vice President Joan Straussman to assess the damage that still exists months after Hurricane Maria hit, learn firsthand the progress being made by our three network members on the ground and chart a path forward to continue to help the island's residents recover. Here is my report.

The regular, thorough organizational assessments required of all nonprofits wanting to become and stay members of the NeighborWorks network is daunting. There is no denying it: The process requires significant staff time and is both demanding and rigorous. But it is a compelling point of differentiation for funders and policymakers, and many organizations have discovered a variety of internal benefits that have made them champions of the requirement.

Punxsutawney Phil, the world’s most celebrated groundhog, scurried back into his tunnel Feb. 2. According to folklore, that means winter will continue for six more weeks—continuing a season that included a “bomb cyclone” that, in many areas, was the most frigid stretch of weather surrounding New Year’s in recorded history.

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind and flight to the imagination.” These are the words of Plato, and centuries later, music continues to be a building block of community-building and engagement.
 
Two members of the NeighborWorks network offer good examples of how the universal attraction of music can be harnessed to bring people together.

Everyone knows it’s important to save for a “rainy day.” Emergencies happen: appliances break, cars sputter to a stop, jobs are lost. But when your paychecks are not that much more than what you need to pay your routine bills, that’s a habit most haven’t been able to form.

Access to broadband internet is fast becoming a predictor of whether you are on the “have” or “have not” side of the American wealth divide. If you can’t access high-speed internet regularly and don’t know how to take advantage of it, you probably won’t do as well in school, won’t know about good available jobs and won’t be able to get those jobs if you did.

My mother’s brush with death started out innocuously. She had a persistent “wheezing,” and while—as the days passed by and it turned into a cough—she knew it probably should have gone away by that time, it took too much energy to catch the required two buses to visit her physician. It could wait a little longer, she reasoned.