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Sustainable Community Change:A New Paradigm for Leadership in Community Revitalization EffortsComprehensive community revitalization projectstypically try to motivate residents in poor, inner-cityneighborhoods by addressing issues perceived asunfair or caused by inequitable allocation ofresources. This strategy may get people involved inthe issue, but it does not often lead to sustainedinvolvement. Organizers have to keep going backand getting residents riled up about a new inequity,which takes a toll on both organizers and residents.This focus can also lead to people functioning habit-ually in an angry or resentful state of mind that canspill over and negatively affect turf issues and rela-tionships within the community. It keeps residents’perception of government and other social institu-tions oppositional so that they have a harder timeenlisting these groups as sustained allies in change.

At the Health Realization Institute, a fifteen-year-old educational and consulting group, we have a dif-ferent approach to comprehensive communityrevitalization programs. Rather than starting withlarge-scale organizing to address communitywideissues or funding and delivery of services that seemto be lacking or needed in the community, this newparadigm calls for training that addresses psycho-logical readiness and health, particularly in terms ofpeople’s innate capacity for resiliency, motivation,self-efficacy, and mature big-picture thinking.Starting out with this kind of focus helps to addressa host of issues that typically hinder or blockprogress in disadvantaged communities. One issue isto get residents to turn out and mobilize their lead-ership capacity.

The Health Realization model has been tested inseveral states, in inner-city neighborhoods and

housing projects in South Central Los Angeles, theSouth Bronx, Oakland, San Francisco, Miami,Tampa, rural Illinois, Fresno, and Minneapolis.Outside evaluations and university-based researchprojects have shown that these programs demon-strated success in (1) empowering residents to takea stronger leadership role in community develop-ment; (2) facilitating residents’ taking solid, sus-tained ownership of the community change process;and (3) significantly changing how practitionersand social institutions work with resident leader-ship to support and enable them to take the lead incommunity revitalization.

Accessing a Healthy Vantage Point

Many residents of poor, inner-city communities feeldisenfranchised, hopeless about their lives, and cyn-ical about change, “victims” whose motivation andpsychological health are adversely affected as aresult. In my research and consulting work in thesecommunities, I have found that many residents suf-fered so many personal challenges and setbacks thatthey felt resigned and overwhelmed much of thetime. Rather than recognizing that they are func-tioning in a state of mind where their thinking itselfhas trapped them in becoming discouraged or hascaused them to lose hope, they attribute these feel-ings to their situation or circumstances. We are cer-tainly not condoning or minimizing these externalconditions. Yet resident surveys show that—giventheir circumstances are not ideal—people cannotfind the motivation or problem-solving abilities toimprove things when they are in a low mood or neg-ative state of mind, in which they cannot distinguishtheir thinking about their conditions from the con-ditions themselves. Therefore they do not take

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advantage even of those opportunities that are avail-able, including job training, GED classes, day care,or other educational or job readiness programs.

Health Realization programs address these barriersdirectly in an educational format, prior to and as asolid foundation for the residents’ organizing them-selves around community issues or concerns. TheHealth Realization Leadership training programgives residents an understanding of how healthierand wiser thinking emerges and how to apply thesequalities of thinking in their day-to-day lives.Conducting this training has a dual advantage. Ithelps people connect with their intrinsic motivation,natural self-worth, and self-efficacy in ways thatlead to higher involvement in the community andgreater self-sufficiency in getting those thingsaccomplished, which in turn leads to richer andmore fulfilling personal and family lives.

In addition, we have also found that this vantagepoint enables residents to adopt a systemic, big-picture perspective on the separate realities of the dif-fering constituents and groups in the largercommunity. The vantage point brings with it thecapacity to see other’s separate realities with under-standing and compassion. For example, residents ofinner-city communities began to grasp why the policeviewed people in their community with a certain biasor distortion. They saw the officers’ biases, condi-tioning, and fears with more compassion for whatthese officers “thought” they were up against. Infact, across the board, they showed the ability to seeeveryone’s perspective, or version of reality, with lessblame or judgment. As a result, they saw ways tocommunicate more effectively. They realized that

people responded better when they trusted that inessence everyone wanted to do the right thing. Theyobserved that positive feelings drew out a healthier,wiser state of mind. They realized that attack, blame,and criticism make others more defensive and morelikely to react with anger, blame, or judgment them-selves. They could see the value of maintaining rap-port, of assuming good will and enjoying themselveswhile helping others feel secure and valued in a waythat made their thinking improve.1

At Modello and Homestead Gardens, the twoMiami public housing projects where HealthRealization intervention programs were begun in1987, residents organized their own PTA groups andmeetings with the area superintendent and schooladministrators. They participated in parenting class-es based on Health Realization. They obtained fund-ing from the school district for teacher training andschool climate programs built on this model. Theyalso wrote grants and received support for after-school programs and tutoring for the youth in theircommunity.

As the project moved into the second year, the resi-dents reorganized a moribund tenant council andbegan working with the police department on com-munity policing initiatives and crime watch pro-grams. They met with the Private Industry Counciland the Chamber of Commerce in South Dade toexplore job training and placement projects. Theywrote a grant to build a new community center tohouse a day care program and pursued GED andother educational programs. After three years, theprogram had served 142 families and more than sixhundred youths. Resident surveys showed that

• Eighty-seven percent of the parents reported thattheir children were more cooperative and report-ed significantly less frustration with or hostilitytoward their children.

• More than 60 percent of residents involved in theprogram became employed, from a baseline of 85percent on public assistance.

People in a low mood or negative state of mindcannot distinguish their thinking about their con-ditions from the conditions themselves. Thereforethey do not take advantage even of those opportu-nities that are available.

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• School discipline referrals and suspensionsdecreased by 75 percent from baseline at the mid-dle-school level.

• Attendance improved and the school truancy ratedropped by 80 percent.

• Parent involvement in the schools improved by500 percent.

• The Homestead Police reported no calls for drugtrafficking or criminal activities such as stolencars or burglaries for almost a year.

Robert Thomas, then senior advisor to the DadeCounty United Way in Miami for community devel-opment, was asked by Janet Reno (who was thestate attorney at the time) to organize a task force ofagency heads to work closely with the Modello–Homestead Gardens programs. In his final report toReno and the United Way, he concluded that:

Change became apparent after the initial ten-week leadership training program. By the thirdyear, residents had organized their own agendafor improving their community and preparingthemselves to leave it for the outside world.They were collaborating to write their owngrants and initiating their own contacts withgovernment officials and service providers.They had no further need for the coalition ofproviders and officials I had organized to bringchanges from the outside. Change had followedthe drawing out of the innate competence ofindividual residents and they were working asan inspired community to change the quality oftheir own lives.2

Kathleen Roe at San Jose State University andBenjamin Bowser at UC Santa Clara conducted anindependent evaluation of the first year of HealthRealization activities at Coliseum Gardens, a trou-bled public housing community in Oakland,California. In 1993, after widespread interviewswith housing authority staff, residents, providers,and community police officers, they concluded that:

Community building and interpersonal activitieshave given residents new tools for dealing withsymptoms of the deeper problems facing theircommunity. Their emerging self-confidence andself-efficacy as a community have fueled theirinterest in tackling bigger issues. The HealthRealization Community Empowerment Projecthas made significant impact on the quality of lifeat Coliseum Gardens in just twelve months. Theresults of the first-year evaluation clearly indi-cate that continued development of the HealthRealization Community Empowerment Projecthas the potential to stimulate and support deeppositive changes in both Coliseum Gardens andits surrounding social environment. Everyoneagrees that something important has happenedat Coliseum Gardens over the past year.3

Over a two-year period, the number of violentcrimes at Coliseum Gardens declined by 45 percent.The homicide rate went from the highest in the cityto zero over a two-year period (and was still zeroafter seven years). Drug possession and salesdecreased by 16 percent, assaults with firearms by38 percent. Youth attendance and involvement inBoys and Girls Club increased by 110 percent, andgang warfare and ethnic clashes between Cam-bodian and African American youths ceased.4

“Residents’ emerging self-confidence and self-efficacy as a community have fueled their interestin tackling bigger issues.”

— K AT H L E E N R O E A N D B E N J A M I N B O W S E R

“Change had followed the drawing out of theinnate competence of individual residents andthey were working as an inspired community tochange the quality of their own lives.”

— R O B E R T T H O M A S , S E N I O R A D V I S O R T O D A D E C O U N T Y

U N I T E D W AY

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How did the principles underlying HealthRealization contribute to these results?

Principles Underlying Health Realization

In Health Realization leadership classes, conscious-ness is explained as the ability to be aware of exis-tence, and as the element that brings thought to lifeas perception. The principle of thought is defined asour innate ability to create any reality. Thought isdescribed as the fabric or building blocks of per-sonal reality, while consciousness furnishes thecapacity to perceive our thinking as reality. (We usethe formula that thought plus consciousness equalsperception.) Mind is the power or energy behindthe entire process. Mind is defined as a universal,impersonal spiritual and emotional intelligence thatenables us to understand life. This innate intelli-gence gives us what we normally call wisdom. Thisuniversal spiritual intelligence is distinct from peo-ple’s learned or conditioned thinking; it is a distinctmode of thought that is also the source of bothobjectivity or clarity of thought and natural goodfeelings and self-worth. This exists as a state thatwe would now define as innate mental health. Thisdeeper, universal intelligence is defined as both theenergy and intelligence behind all life—as a lifeforce that provides access to what has been calleduniversal love or understanding, grace, compassion,aliveness and “flow.”

These principles are taught in much the same waythat we would teach those of math or physics or anyprinciple-based science. We describe how these threebasic elements work together to determine percep-tion. An analogy to chemistry would be to explainhow basic elements are combined to form com-pounds. The psychological compounds created fromthese three elements are things such as anger, resent-ment, fear, and depression, or alternatively happi-ness, love, and gratitude. We then delineate the logicof how thought, when seen as real, creates feelingsand leads to our behavior. We tie these principles ina logical way to participants’ everyday experiencesand their normal thinking patterns.

The initial classes are taught didactically, but as peo-ple begin to see the logic of the principles they evolveinto an interactive or Socratic dialogue, in whichparticipants share what they are learning in terms oftheir day-to-day feelings, behavior, and reaction toevents around them. They can then, on their own,link these feelings and responses with their state ofmind, discerning whether they are reacting to theirown judgments, expectations, fears, or concerns oralternatively seeing the situation from a higher van-tage point of understanding and compassion.Participants learn to recognize which state of mindthey are functioning from by noticing the qualitiesof feelings they are having at the moment.

People are shown how their thoughts create theirfeelings, so that they recognize for themselves thatnegative or stress-producing emotions tell us that weare caught up in personal, learned, or conditionedthought. Unconditional feelings of well-being andother impersonal or “higher-order” feelings such asuniversal love, gratitude, compassion, and apprecia-tion are recognized as indicators that we are in astate of wisdom, using our capacity for insight andclarity of thought—qualities of our thought processthat come directly from the mind, without the con-tamination of personal thought.

As a result of this deeper understanding of states ofmind and of the role of thought, residents are able toget through to people in a more respectful, clearer,and less critical manner. They notice when theirthinking shifts back into the realm of the personal.They know that they are in this less objective stateof mind when their feelings become those of angeror resentment, frustration or blame. In practice, weobserved that they noticed these feelings and then

Thought, when seen as real, creates feelings andleads to our behavior. We tie the Health Realizationprinciples in a logical way to participants’ everydayexperiences and their normal thinking patterns.

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were able to step back and reassess the situation totake things less personally. In other words, they wereable to recognize when they were caught up in aclosed, limited view of their community. Theynoticed when they had fallen into judging certaingroups from a myopic frame of reference and werefeeling critical or reactive toward what others weredoing. They could more quickly realize that this per-spective was not helpful and detach themselves fromit. They were then able to calm things down, lighteneveryone up, and move ahead to achieve a meetingof the minds that was beyond everyone’s separateframe of reference. The resident leadership foundthat they could bring out a wiser, more understand-ing state of mind and connect to higher-order val-ues—of even the police, housing authority directors,business groups, and others—by maintaining calm-ness and clarity of thought, and by focusing on solu-tions and building consensus rather than pointing afinger or blaming.

Background of This Understanding

Research leading to this paradigm started as part ofa National Institute of Mental Health five-yeardemonstration grant on primary prevention at theUniversity of Oregon. I was the primary investiga-tor and had help from other research faculty. Theinitial dissemination of these findings permittedaccess to populations that allowed us to evaluateoutcomes of both individual and community inter-ventions over a twenty-year period. This researchled a greater number of practitioners andresearchers to take a look at these preliminary find-ings and carry their studies on from there.Ultimately, the overall consistency of outcomesacross programs led a number of practitioners toconclude that these findings might entail useful dis-

coveries about the nature of resiliency and the roleof thought in our moment-to-moment functioning.

Every human being has a core of psychologicalhealth. When people are not gripped by or focusedon their personal history or problems, they havedirect access to a higher level of well-being, self-efficacy, and common sense. As we began to discernthe principles underlying these discoveries morefully, we recognized that the only thing that keptpeople separated from this innate, natural state ofmind was conditioning. This conditioning took theform of mind-sets built from learned or habitualthoughts about their past, leading to hopelessness ordespair about their circumstances or their situation.

As we conducted more pilot programs with fundingfrom the Department of Justice, National Instituteon Drug Abuse, Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment, and private foundations, we foundthat the most effective strategy was not to first try tochange external factors, nor was it to try to changepeople’s thinking, attitudes, or outlook. We discov-ered that the most effective strategy was to help peo-ple gain a genuine understanding of whatconditioned thoughts are and what the most basicfunction of thought is. We found that the most prac-tical way to help people gain this understanding wasto explain how the mind causes our thinking, ateach moment, as human beings, to become percep-tion, to become our view of reality. We couldexplain, for example, how someone who haddropped out of school and had been unemployed fora time could think, and thus feel, that she might aswell not even try to get a job or attempt to get moreeducation. This thinking can look so real to the per-

As a result of this deeper understanding of statesof mind and of the role of thought, residents areable to get through to people in a more respectful,clearer, and less critical manner.

The overall consistency of outcomes across pro-grams led a number of practitioners to concludethat these findings might entail useful discoveriesabout the nature of resiliency and the role ofthought in our moment-to-moment functioning.

14 Nat ional Civ ic Review

son that she may feel depressed or get anxious whenthinking about educational possibilities or employ-ment. In the Health Realization courses, the individ-ual can realize that this thinking is not real, butmerely an ingrained habit. We found that the bestway to teach this understanding was in a neutralway, in an educational format. The participantscould appreciate that these principles were them-selves impartial and universal, and that they appliedto everyone, irrespective of their station in life ortheir role in the community.

Once this recognition occurs, people are lessgripped by personal, conditioned thoughts and canlet them go. This ability gets stronger as they seewhat these thoughts really are: merely habits of per-ception learned from their past. With this under-standing, they can more easily drop an emotional orpsychological attachment to any limiting condi-tioned thought that comes up. Their natural self-worth and self-confidence then naturally emerges,giving the person new insights about what he canand wants to do with his life. These insights nor-mally move people to a level of functioning waybeyond what their conditioned thoughts allow themto perceive as possible.5

We also found that we were able to teach people notonly that they had a core of, or basic capacity for,healthy thinking but also that they could recognizewhen they were trapped in perceptions caused bytheir conditioned thoughts. We found that peoplecould then recognize and appreciate the differencebetween the state of mind of hopelessness, apathy,and cynicism and the state of mind that engagedtheir common sense, natural well-being, and intrin-sic self-motivation. Once people gained this under-standing, even to a small degree, it created asnowball effect. People’s conditioned thinking start-ed to fade into the background. Once these thoughtsno longer dominated their consciousness, their goodfeelings, capacity for good judgment, and a proac-tive outlook became the normal mode of function-ing. This new level of psychological health and

resiliency became stronger prior to their circum-stances getting better. People used this newly foundcapacity to address and solve problems in their livesthat had previously seemed intractable.

Gaining Wisdom and Self-Motivation

One common criticism that we ran into in our initialprojects, conducted in low-income, inner-city set-tings, was that if we helped people become happierand enjoy life more fully, they would lose their moti-vation to change their circumstances or rightwrongs. What we found in practice was, of course,just the opposite. As people gained a healthier per-spective, they also saw the big picture more clearly.They started to identify and appreciate the kindsand range of resources, skills, and activities thatwould help their community become healthier. Theyrealized and articulated a practical long-term strate-gy for community revitalization and development.They then initiated meetings with county and cityofficials, the police department, and the school dis-trict to articulate these needs to them. In otherwords, they realized that they knew better than any-one else what their community needed; they had theconfidence to go to providers, social, and govern-ment institutions and other groups and tell themwhat they could do to make that strategy a reality.They also started to see where these institutionswere stuck in their own box of thinking and percep-tions that caused them to adopt policies andapproaches that either did not help or sometimesactually made things worse.

For example, residents met with the police andshared with them that they could understand why

This new level of psychological health andresiliency became stronger prior to their circum-stances getting better. People used this newlyfound capacity to address and solve problems intheir lives that had previously seemed intractable.

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officers perceived the community as uncooperative,and the people in it as “scum” or incorrigible. Theycould explain neutrally, to the officers, how the his-tory of this relationship had led to deterioration andhardening of attitudes on both sides. They recom-mended new kinds of partnerships, strategies, andcollaborative efforts that led to mutual understand-ing and to officers working with the communityrather than “on” the community. They met with theschool board and helped them recognize the factorsin the schools that contributed to youths feelingalienated and uncomfortable in school. These ses-sions led to school climate changes, teacher training,new youth leadership curricula and after-school pro-grams to address these needs, and enhanced studentlearning and motivation. They met with employ-ment and job training agencies to help them see notonly what programs were needed but how to deliv-er them starting where people were, and making iteasier for residents to participate in and completethese programs.

Their obvious wisdom and respectful, but firm, no-nonsense approach impressed agency heads andgovernment institutions to the point that theybecame eager to come in and help. These profes-sionals could see that the residents’ motivation andleadership was in place to the point they knew thatefforts built on their insights would be successful,and that they would not be pouring money andresources into another black hole. They appreciatedthat they could meet with resident leadership andwork cooperatively, with real feelings of mutualrespect, to find solutions when things were notworking, rather than running into blame, anger, andreactivity that made collaboration and creative

problem solving difficult. In these sessions, the abil-ity of residents to stay in their healthy mode ofthinking brought others up to their level. Thusproviders became more motivated, compassionate,and insightful about what was needed and moreinnovative about what could be done. They toobecame more hopeful and confident about whatcould be accomplished.

The outcomes in our early projects were impressive,were way above the norm of what other efforts hadaccomplished in these communities.6 These out-comes were highlighted on national media andgained international attention. Even so, many werestill skeptical and put down the results to charis-matic leaders, unique and caring practitioners, orother external factors. Yet pre- and posttesting ofboth residents and providers going through theHealth Realization training showed that the imme-diate changes were internal, and that these changesled to communitywide results.7

Participants consistently reported becoming moreaware of how their thoughts led to their feelings andbehavior. Rather than attempting to rely on tech-niques to change their thinking, or trying to thinkpositively, they saw the underlying mechanism andunderstood the process by which thought becomesperception. From the way that participants quicklyregained a healthy state of mind, broader perspec-tive, and self-motivation, we ourselves started torealize that this state of mind is buoyant; it is alwaystrying to surface naturally, just as our body’simmune system works naturally to move the bodyback to physical health, or just as a cork pops to thesurface if it is not held down.

Participants reported feeling less anxious ordepressed, able to better manage and even controltheir mood. Family stress and violence decreased,and people became more positively involved withtheir families, schools, and in the community. Wewere rapidly working ourselves out of a job as theresidents became wiser and more proactive, moving

They recommended new kinds of partnerships,strategies, and collaborative efforts that led tomutual understanding and to police officersworking with the community rather than “on” thecommunity.

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us into the background. We realized more and morethat resiliency and the buoyant nature of our natu-ral state of mental health are both hard-wired,innate capacities, in the same way that breathing orhaving our heart beat are inborn capacities; it wasan observation that the field of psychology itselfhad not made, up to that point. We recognized thatthe most basic psychological common denominatoris thought, the fact or nature of thought, as it cre-ates perception. We started to see over and overthat everyone has the capacity to be a wise, beauti-ful, caring, and confident person, and that it is onlypersonal or learned thought that takes people out ofthe natural condition. The police and other institu-tions began to appreciate the ideas, insights, andcreativity of the residents. We were thrilled to findthat the range of negative conditions, the history ofindividuals and the community, and all the otherdebilitating external circumstances did not have tobe fixed before people could change to becomeactive, motivated leaders or change their own livesin a positive direction.

Even as these results were spreading and gaining theattention of media and foundations, we were some-times accused of blaming the victim or of trying tocontrol or manipulate people’s thinking—of bring-ing a dominant culture or “white man’s” psycholo-gy into minority communities. In fact, whathappened was just the opposite. People began tothink for themselves, finding their own wisdom andself-confidence. They found their own inner strengthand resiliency and were less affected by others’stereotypes and judgments.

Understanding the universal function of thought,they realized that everyone had his or her own opin-ion and prejudices; they started trusting their own

judgment, having their own insights, and finding thecertainty to take a stronger and more proactive lead-ership role. Widespread community change andimprovements in social indices were measured as theresidents worked as equal partners with providers inan atmosphere of mutual trust, rapport, and jointproblem solving.

E N D N O T E S

1. Mills, R. C., and Spittle, E. B. The Wisdom Within.Renton, Wash.: Lone Pine, 2001; Pransky, J. Prevention fromthe Inside out. Cabot, Vt.: NEHRI, 2003.

2. Thomas, R. “Toward a Seamless Approach to HumanProblems.” Unpublished master’s thesis, Goddard University,Plainfield, Vt., 1993.

3. Roe, K., and Bowser, B. “Health Realization/CommunityEmpowerment Project: Evaluation of First Year Activities.”Report submitted to East Bay Community Recovery Project,Oakland, Calif., 1993.

4. Mills, R. C. “The Understanding Behind HealthRealization: Summary of Clinical, Prevention, andCommunity Empowerment Applications.” Saratoga, Calif.:Health Realization Institute, 2002.

5. Mills and Spittle (2001); Pransky (2003).

6. Pranksy (2003).

7. Borg, M. B. “The Impact of Training in the HealthRealization Model on Affective States of PsychologicalDistress.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, CaliforniaSchool of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles, 1997;Harder, P. “The Visitacion Valley Community ResiliencyProject: Interim Evaluation Report.” San Francisco: Harderand Co., 2002.

Roger C. Mills, a Distinguished Urban Scholar at SanFrancisco State University, is president of the HealthRealization Institute.

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