Pulling Together:
A Handbook for Community Change
Our Story
Pulling Together - A Handbook for Community Change captures the stories and lessons learned by real people seeking positive change in their communities. This handbook is an antidote to the politics of polarization that pulls us apart. Pulling Together gives the inspiration, and practical guidance to pull together and get things done.
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The authors, Tom Mosgaller and Mike Breininger, provide pathways to create vibrant and fulfilling places to live and raise families. They are offering a real world strategy to get folk off their couches and create positive local change. They wrote real stories by real folks who did it. They have been doing this work for many years and see firsthand how communities and families are positively impacted when we learn to work together.
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Tom Mosgaller
Mike Breininger
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Authors Tom Mosgaller and Mike Breininger bring a wealth of experience and diverse perspectives to this handbook. Mike, a small-town conservative, evangelical pastor, and Tom, a progressive community organizer from the city, have collaborated for over a decade. Their shared vision for stronger communities transcends ideological divides and emphasizes the power of love, trust, and relationships.
You can learn more about Tom's other community building book, Bending Granite, at www.bendinggranite.com.
Contributors to this book include:
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Sara Alvarado is a writer, speaker, entrepreneur, and fierce advocate for racial justice in real estate. She believes that the way to handle challenges in life and business is to show up authentic, bold, vulnerable, and always ready for fun.
For over thirty-five years, Will Andresen has collaborated with local communities and non-profit organizations in creating high impact, outcome-driven community development initiatives. His career focused on asset-based community development in rural and remote communities. After retiring as Director of the University of Wisconsin’s Institute of Community Development, he continues to advocate for positive asset-based change in his Upper Peninsula community.
Mike Breininger and his wife, Christy, are parents to sixteen children. He is the President and founder of Southwest Partners, a community development organization, and a founding member of Wisconsin Partners, a statewide associations network.
Michele Engh is an ELCA Pastor living in the Driftless Region of Southwest Wisconsin with her husband Pete. She is a mother of five and has a career path that includes nursing, youth ministry, and community development. Michelle is passionate about building relationships across silos and other barriers because it is only in relationships that we can bring about positive change.
Tommy Enright is a farmer, advocate, and Communications Director for Wisconsin Farmers Union. He lives on a small farm in Central Wisconsin with his spouse, Sam, and their two sons.
Kristen Joiner has co-founded multiple environmental and social impact ventures, a non-profit organization, and a school. Scenarios USA, the non-profit she started with producer Maura Minsky, is recognized for pioneering a human-rights approach to comprehensive sexuality education, currently being scaled to global implementation by the WHO and UNFPA. Under her leadership, the private/public partnership for climate change developed by the Wisconsin environmental organization, Sustain Dane, was selected as a national model by the Obama Administration. Kristen wrote former Obama Administration Representative for International Disability Rights, Judy Heumann’s, two memoirs: Being Heumann (Beacon Press) and Rolling Warrior (YA -Beacon Press). Being Heumann was optioned by Apple TV and is currently in pre-development by the Oscar-winning filmmaker, Sian Heder. Kristan lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her family and a pup who looks like a sheep.
John McKnight is co-founder of the Asset Based Community Development Institute (ABCD) and is recognized globally as a community development visionary, sage, and storyteller. John co-authored the original basic ABCD guide Building Communities from the Inside Out and its current version The Connected Community.
Tom Mosgaller is an experienced community builder, teacher, and leader who believes that the power of relationships is the cornerstone of strong, vibrant communities. Tom has led, taught, and coached community builders in the art of pulling together in places both big and small, urban and rural, locally, and internationally. He has celebrated successes and learned from setbacks that inspired the timeless lessons captured in the Change Framework that serves as the backbone of Pulling Together. He is past president of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), and co-author of the recently published book on institutional change: Bending Granite. Tom has led and served on numerous educational, healthcare, governmental, faith-based, and agricultural boards. When Tom is not leading, teaching, and working with others, he can be found learning from the land and animals on
his farm in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin.
Jodie Pope is a higher education professional and a proud mother to her son, Cameron. She enjoys traveling, laughing, listening to music, and embracing her creative side.
Paul Terranova is the Midwest Community Organizer for Manufactured Housing Action (MHAction). Prior to that, he spent twenty years bringing an organizing lens to community center work at the Lussier Community Education Center in Madison, WI. Earlier in his career, he worked as a youth organizer with El Centro Hispano (Durham, North Carolina), a refugee job developer with Lutheran Family Services, a tenant organizer with the North Carolina Low Income Housing Coalition, a public action organizer with the United Farmworkers of America AFL-CIO, and a volunteer support worker with children living on the streets in Cape Town, South Africa. Paul lives in Madison with his wife Nancy.
Jeff Yost is President and CEO of the Nebraska Community Foundation (NCF). For the past 25 years NCF has inspired leaders and residents in over 250 Nebraska communities to take charge, inspire change, and stimulate their local economies.