The Bottom-Up Revolution How To Build Community Wealth From the Bottom Up
Sep 11, 2025
Jessica David, co-founder of Local Return and a Harvard Divinity School student, joins Josh Daley, also a co-founder and food policy advocate, to share their vision for community-driven wealth building in Rhode Island. They discuss empowering local entrepreneurs through innovative financing and education, tackling socioeconomic challenges, and the importance of cooperative models for addressing issues like housing affordability. The conversation highlights grassroots initiatives and the need for collaboration between residents and local government for vibrant community development.
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What Community Wealth Really Means
- Community wealth includes financial, social, and relational assets that let places bounce back and share resources.
- Local ownership and local investment are core ways to build that collective resilience.
Wealth From Within Beats Parachute Capital
- Community wealth is assets marshaled within a place that rotate and multiply to benefit local people.
- That kind of wealth is deployed by residents, not parachuted in from outside interests.
Workshops Revealed Missing Local Investment Pipeline
- Local Return ran workshops and found 35 people eager to invest locally but no pipeline existed for average residents.
- That gap led them to design a pooled fund so ordinary Rhode Islanders could invest together.