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The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America's Cities
November, 2005 - Champaign, IL - Are government social programs the only way to cure America's social ills? Not according to a new book, The Power of ONE: Heroes Forging America's Civic Reawakening from Sea to Shining Sea. The author, Debra J. Schweiger, maintains that within the last twenty years, average Americans have become motivated to combat everything from cybercrime to homelessness and gang violence to impoverished neighborhoods. “It's an extraordinary trend of unsung citizen-heroes, weary of social and moral decay, determined to find answers,” she concludes. “Employing creativity and compassion, they've rescued thousands of lives and saved millions in future costs to taxpayers,” she adds.
The Power of ONE details the results from 26 citizen-inspired social cures that include:
An 84% one-year employment retention rate for the previously homeless.
An 89% adoption rate of special needs foster children.
A 95% 1-year job retention rate for 10,000 low-income women previously on drugs.
A 50 % replication, or “civic-franchising”, rate nationwide. Some have replicated hundreds of times, even to other countries.
The author, who was once employed during the seventies and eighties in three state legislatures as an analyst of state agency social programs, self-funded her research. She launched an eight-year, 10,000-mile trek across America and discovered over 100 citizen social cures that successfully counter crime, poverty, housing shortages, neighborhood decay, and youth problems. Schweiger chronicles the amazing stories of 35 altruistic citizen inventors who characteristically give up personal lives, retirements, or six-figure professions to launch their initiatives.
This under-publicized movement re-igniting civic America is a low-budget one thanks to the help of thousands of volunteers. But it's just one or a few individuals who invent the solutions, as was the case for the Amber Plan, the network designed to track child abductors. Five individuals in Ft. Worth, Texas founded it. Another, People for People, was created in 1989 by one former NFL running back that gave up his multi-million dollar pension. Today, he and his staff transform the lives of 15,000 formerly welfare dependent in Philadelphia each year.
Schweiger provides substantiated evidence that this new trend of “civic entrepreneurs” (citizens who harness entrepreneurial skills to counter social problems in their communities) is a growing one. Her web site, www.powerone.org, is dedicated to the topic.
The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America's Cities (Second Edition, Trafford Press, Aug. 2005) is available online for $26.95 (suggested retail) at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Idealbooks.com, and independent bookstores. A copy can also be purchased off of this web site through Trafford publishing.
ISBN 141203201-6
Debra Schweiger Berg is a B.A., political science/economics, graduate and an M.P.A., public administration, graduate of the University of Illinois. At Illinois, she received high distinction honors as well as the Charles Merriam Scholar award for her local government research. During her tenure, she was hired as an assistant to an Illinois congressman during the Watergate hearings and as an editor for the Treasury Department. Post-college, Debra was recruited as one of the first women to serve on the staffs of the Illinois, Kentucky, and Minnesota state legislatures. In all three states, she served as a budget analyst over billions of state agency dollars and as a program evaluation analyst on numerous statewide special education, welfare, and education projects.
Debra successfully turned entrepreneur in the mid-eighties, founding an international marketing and training company that reached into the top 2% of all micro-enterprise businesses. A unique encounter in 1995 sparked her 10-year research trek of America's civic entrepreneurs. Her groundbreaking findings exposing a spontaneous new grassroots movement, she titles "The New Civic America", resulted in a book, The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America's Cities. Now, as a tireless ambassador of this innovative trend, Debra speaks to a wide range of audiences captivating them with the many inspiring stories that have propelled it….stories of struggle and success and of the founders themselves who've spearheaded what is now a hope filled trend producing social cures for democracies worldwide.
Contact: powerofone1@sbcglobal.net
217-352-4348
Power of One Publishing
P.O. Box 7710
Champaign, IL 61826-6192