• We have the science to ensure that virtually every young person arrives at adulthood with the skills, interests, values, and health habits they need to lead a productive life in caring relationships with others.

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The Nurture Effect

• Nurturing Environments are the key to human thriving.
• Minimize toxic biological and social conditions
• Richly reinforce all kinds of prosocial behavior
• Limit opportunities and Influences for problem behavior.
• Promote psychological flexibility—the ability to mindfully pursue one’s values, even in the context of distressing thoughts and feelings.

Rebooting Capitalism: How We Can Forge a Society That Works for Everyone

• How and why the U.S. evolved a rapacious form of capitalism and what we can do about it.

Values to Action

A nonprofit dedicated to evolving more nurturing societies.

Action Circles: One Strategy for Addressing Our Many Problems

• If you are not satisfied with the state of the world, action circles give you an opportunity to do something about it.
• They consists of a small group of people who come together to advance a very specific improvement in society.
• By being time limited, they give you a way to contribute to change that doesn’t require you to quit your job, your education, your family, and your recreation.
• And it puts you in in contact with like-minded, nurturing people.

Action Circles Thus Far

• Increasing the use of evidence-based social-emotional learning in schools—the PAX Good Behavior Game and Cooperative Learning
• Increasing the use of effective reading instruction
• Increasing availability of behaviorally skilled personnel in healthcare
• Guide to Reforming Juvenile Justice in Your Community
• Regulating Industries whose marketing contributes to more than a million deaths per year
• Increasing Prosocial Values, Norms, and Behaviors in Communities.
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• Defending against the Attack on Democracy

Reducing Disparities in Reading Skill

• Effective methods of teaching reading have been identified through hundreds of studies over the past forty years.
• Yet effective instructional methods have not been widely adopted.
• As a result, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that, in 2019, only 35% of fourth grade students were proficient in reading, while 36% lacked even basic skills
• The proportion of Black and Hispanic children who lack basic skills was significantly higher than for the population as a whole (52% and 45% respectively)

We identified a Menu of Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Reading Skill

• Educating parents and the community about the importance of reading skill
• Training and consultation in effective reading instruction for teachers.
• Supplemental instruction in reading using evidence-based methods, that are provided by community volunteers and parents
• Funnix, a computerized reading instruction program using Direct Instruction Principles
• Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons

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Imagine hundreds of action circles around the country that are working on increasing the use of phonics-based reading instruction.

Generic Features of Action �Circles that Design Local Action Circles

• Identify a specific problem.
• Document its incidence and prevalence in the population, its deleterious consequences, and its cost
• Identify any empirically based programs, practices, or policies that have been shown to affect the problem.
• Indicate the additional research that would strengthen our ability to affect the problem.
• Specify interventions that a could be implemented in a local community
• Design a protocol for local action circles.

Nurturing Communities

• We have come to the conclusion that the optimal way to improve wellbeing is to work at the community level.
• A careful reading of the state of the political system in this country suggests that, as a nation, we are in for years of conservative control of the federal government and the governments of many states.*
• If this happens, it will be impossible to implement policies and programs that can increase nurturance at the national level or in those states.

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* Hacker and Pierson, Let Them Eat Tweets https://www.amazon.com/Let-them-Eat-Tweets-Inequality-ebook/dp/B07ZTT5ZK2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2C2KK6FZAQTEO&keywords=let+them+eat+tweets&qid=1645624617&s=books&sprefix=let+them+eat+tweets%2Cstripbooks%2C120&sr=1-1

What Can Be Done�

• Support the development of more nurturing communities.

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• In the context of the situation in the nation, we can help to evolve islands of nurturing communities.

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• This must include Rural White communities!

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Identifying Foundational Values

• PAX Vision
• If this were the most wonderful community you could imagine, what would we See, Hear, Do, and Feel More?
• What would we See, Hear, Do, and Feel Less?

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Next Steps

• Promoting the behaviors that people aspire to see more of in the community?
• Posting praise, thanks, or recognition
• In social media
• On the Nurture Newberg website
• Through a participatory process, develop goals that would advance the vision.
• Develop Action Circles to work toward specific goals that advance the vision.

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To Join Values to Action

https://www.valuestoaction.com/join

For a copy of these slides, email me at Tony@ori.org