These, the stories of America's grassroots heroes, are the centerpiece of @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG.

These stories are the result of my work from 1990 through 1998. Sadly, many of these fine organizations are no longer active, and in many cases contact information has changed. I regret that it is no longer practical for us to update the information on this site, but I leave the original body of information online as a way of celebrating these innovative ideas and the outstanding people who put them to work in their communities.

Despite the title of this page, you may have noticed that we didn't stop at 100 stories. That small a number wouldn't be nearly enough to cover all the made-in-America geniuses who saw problems in their communities and rolled up their sleeves to step in and fix them. So we're still traveling, and still telling the stories of the nation's most innovative programs, even though we're up to more than 200 features now.

However many stories it takes, our purpose here is to highlight the best grassroots programs in every state in the U.S., and to provide a broad range of the issues and problems that they address, from feeding hungry people and housing the homeless to such more advanced self-reliance initiatives as job training, political organizing and community economic development.

To make it easy to find the stories that fit your particular interest, we list all the stories in several ways:

• Brief summaries by region:
  • The Northeast
  • The South
  • The 'Rustbelt'
  • The Great Plains
  • The Rockies
  • The Far West
• Listings by state
• Listings by type of program
• 'Johnny Appleseed' Awards (top programs)
• Use our Search Engine to find keywords throughout @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG: