Where Life Loves to Happen™
A city-wide program for individual and community renewal

Life That Loves to Happen Seminars

Heartbeat's Inner-City Programs

Building on Strength in the Inner City

Why Cities? Because that's where the people are. Most of the world's population now live in cities. And that's where the hurt is!

"More and more people are falling through the cracks in our cities. We can't do everything, but we must do something to provide new hope and deep encouragement. Then, we must also provide materials and programs for converting that new hope and energy into a better life for individuals in every segment of the city's population."

Don Williams, chairman of Heartbeat Board
chairman of The Trammell Crow Company

What's a city for? Some of the greatest cities sprang up and grew into their most golden ages as a result of a very human need—the need for people to have a place to come together and tell their stories.

They told stories of courage, of tragedy and joy. They told stories that revealed the wisdom needed to make a better life for themselves, their families, and their city. These are the stories that Heartbeat is encouraging people to come together and share, once again.

Heartbeat's Where Life Loves to Happen is a multi-dimensional, multi-year, city-wide program designed to raise a city's quality of life. This is accomplished by releasing, supporting, and encouraging the humanizing forces of hope, connection, and communication in the lives of its citizens. Making the city once again a place where you come to tell your story, where you can become a part of a great story—the story of a city where, for more and more of its citizens, life loves to happen.

That's the why. Now here's an quick look at the how. A look at both the goals and how those goals will be reached . . .

Cities How?

Heartbeat's Where Life Loves to Happen city-wide educational program is designed to meet three objectives:

1. IMPROVE THE CLIMATE: Create incremental positive shifts in attitudes and behaviors
   In today's busy, fragmented world, many people seem to feel that they have little time for reflection . . . or that they have anything very encouraging to reflect upon. This program will use a broad-based educational campaign to heighten awareness and encourage life-enhancing reflection. The goal is to reduce the levels of stress, conflict, and frustration and to increase the city's levels of civility, compassion, and productivity. As more and more people begin to move toward a life that loves to happen, the overall climate of the city will begin to improve.
   
   
2. STRENGTHEN THE INDIVIDUAL: Provide the in-depth educational experiences necessary to effect deep and lasting change
   Beyond the work in mass media, books, and the Internet, Heartbeat provides for face-to-face instruction and interaction. For creating and sustaining significant positive change, there is probably nothing more effective than the environment of a small group or class. And in Heartbeat's more than twenty years of working in cities, we have discovered that nothing has been proven to be more effective for the creation of small groups than participation in public seminars such as Heartbeat's Life That Loves to Happen Seminars.
   
   
3. DEVELOP LEADERSHIP FOR CREATING COMMUNITY: Surface, cultivate, and train the individuals needed to support the development of a grassroots, multi-generational program
   Heartbeat will also train communicators, community builders, and instructor/trainers in working with small groups, workshops, seminars, and other community events to connect people more deeply to each other, helping them to see the benefits of living a life that is loving to happen.

Cities What?

Heartbeat's strategies, presentations, products, and partners for meeting our three objectives:

1. BROAD AWARENESS CAMPAIGN:
   Special materials have been prepared to help generate a broad awareness of the Life That Loves to Happen concepts throughout a city, and to attract more and more people to the web site (http://www.heartbeatlife.com), where they can participate in the online education. These materials include billboards, newspaper ads, take-ones, telephone and radio messages, and more. (As the program unfolds, however, we are convinced that the most effective means of publicity will be by word-of-mouth.)
   
   
2. LIFE THAT LOVES TO HAPPEN SEMINARS:
   These seminars can be adapted to a broad range of audiences, including seminars for social workers, healthcare providers, businesses, community workshops, schools, and more. To find out more, and to see what participants are saying about their seminar experience, go to Life That Loves to Happen.
   
   
3. CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR A LIFE THAT LOVES TO HAPPEN:
   Small groups and instructor-led classes will be guided and supported by Heartbeat's educational materials, including books, workbooks, tapes, and more. This continuing education is designed for those who want to go deeper into the insights of Life That Loves to Happen. 
   
   
4. HEARTBEAT'S INNER-CITY PROGRAMS
   These programs, designed for the inner city, include:
   
   

   The Neighborhood Newspaper Project: This training workshop equips individuals or organizations to help inner-city neighborhoods work together to launch their own newspapers. The neighborhood-based production of these papers empowers residents and deepens the sense of community.
   
   

   Personal and Community Empowerment (PACE): This 13-week course trains inner-city residents to plan and implement projects that will improve the quality of life in their own neighborhoods.
   
   

   Back to Work: This course focuses on the life skills that are fundamental to a person's success in finding and keeping employment. Students explore how to work with others, how to work for a boss, how to resolve conflicts, how to deal with emotions, and more.
   
   

   The Community Computer Course: This curriculum teaches computer skills within an "educating for empowerment" model. This approach helps students to make the immediate connection between the things they are learning in the classroom and their ability to make positive changes in their own lives, families, and communities.
   
   

   To learn more about these programs, go to Heartbeat's Inner-City Programs.
   
   

   CITY LEADERS.
   Leaders from five cities—Dallas, Vancouver, BC, Nashville, Houston, and Miami—have already selected Heartbeat's Where Life Loves to Happen for their cities.
   
   While Heartbeat's vision, combined with that of each city's leadership, will create and refine models for effecting positive change in cities everywhere, the focus is local. The leadership is local. The program belongs to each city and is guided by each city's leaders, thereby creating:

   Dallas: Where Life Loves to Happen™, Miami: Where Life Loves to Happen™, Vancouver: Where Life Loves to Happen™, Nashville: Where Life Loves to Happen™, Houston: Where Life Loves to Happen™.

Over the coming months, you will be able to read reports on the progress being made in these cities. For information on the availability of components of the program for use in getting things started in your city, go to City Happenings.

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