Drew O'Connor has spent his entire life as a community activist. From his experience working on affordable housing issues in college, to his time in the Peace Corps, to his years spent in New Orleans working for the Louisiana Health Department as a community organizer, his career has been defined by bolstering communities' civic culture.
In 2008, O'Connor, who had been working for the Denver-Based, nationally focused National Civic League decided to focus on his immediate community.
That's when O'Connor jumped from the National Civic league to Colorado's Civic Canopy, an organization aimed at fostering dialogue within and between communities.
Founded in 2003, Civic Canopy is the brainchild of O'Connor's long-time friend Bill Fulton, who created the organization with the idea of communities as ecosystems.
O'Connor likens Civic Canopy's role in Denver's communities to that of a rain forest canopy.
"The idea is to just the amount of cover for the community to thrive," he says.
The Canopy is essentially a network of partners with a stake in the well-being of Denver neighborhoods.
"We want to construct the environs so that people and organizations come together in the best of circumstances" to solve problems O'Connor says.
The Civic Canopy does this by organizing a variety of public meetings, improving communication through its website, and by developing common indicators of civic health for which to strive
O'Connor is currently working on a project called the Near Northeast Children's Collaborative, which he likens to the famous Harlem Children's Zone in New York.
Using state-of-the-art early childhood education and health indicators as barometers for success, O'Connor hopes to help eradicate the cycle of poverty in Northeast Denver neighborhoods using a holistic approach.
"There are all sorts of things that support of inhibit a child's capacity to learn," O'Connor says. That's why the organization is reaching out to everyone from teachers to parents to doctors.
"We just have to get everyone together and agree to stepping outside our individual interests in a invest in something larger," he says.
"Once we give people the opportunity to operate in the way, people much prefer to exist in those types of relationships."