Demonstrating Our Values, Impact and Effectiveness: Final Report of the NeighborWorks Community Organizing Pilot Program

A Publication of NeighborWorks America and the NeighborWorks Community Building and Organizing Initiative. The NeighborWorks Community Organizing Pilot Program (COPP) was created by organizations within the NeighborWorks network to:- Place organizing in a central position as a strategy for community development and neighborhood revitalization;- Report to the broader community development field the significant value-added quality of community organizing to communities; and- Systematize ways of reporting improvements beyond housing development and investment that are important to the life of the communities in which community development organizations operate.The Community Organizing Pilot Program was both a program with specific objectives, and also an applied research project that explored the effects of organizing activities on the work of selected NeighborWorks organizations.This report presents the work and accomplishments of COPP both as a program, and also as a project in applied research

Going Comprehensive: Anatomy of an Initiative That Worked -- CCRP in the South Bronx

Traces the story of the Comprehensive Community Revitalization Program (CCRP), a model approach to neighborhood redevelopment in the South Bronx that operated in concert with local nonprofit community development corporations

The East Baltimore Revitalization Initiative: A Commitment to Economic Inclusion

Describes the first phase of a twenty-year, cross-sector effort to transform a distressed neighborhood into a mixed-income residential community and provide job opportunities for minorities and women; achievements to date; challenges; and lessons learned

Ten Years of Community Profiles in New Hampshire

Through a program called Community Profiles, the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension has helped 57 New Hampshire communities develop a vision for their future and mobilize local residents to act on that vision. The Community Profile process is based on the premise that communities must engage members in identifying and documenting common and deeply held values from which to craft a vision for the future if they are to build and sustain community vitality. The process also helps communities find new and creative ways to pursue that vision by leveraging resources within and outside of the community. These resources include individual skills, local organizational capacity, and local, state, and regional institutional-support structures. Since creating and pursuing a vision is a challenge for communities that often rely on volunteers, the Community Profiles program was conceived to help them achieve these functions. Community Profiles is, in essence, a process that enables community residents to take stock of current conditions, build a collective set of goals for their future, and develop an action plan for realizing that vision. In the past 10 years, UNH Cooperative Extension has helped nearly a quarter of the state’s incorporated cities and towns conduct Community Profiles. This retrospective shares with our stakeholders the various successes that communities have had as a result of the process. This publication was inspired by stories emerging from Community Profiles conducted between 1996 and 2006 in 42 communities. The communities selected for this report were either particularly successful at carrying out the Community Profiles process, or they achieved positive outcomes as a result of the process. Through this report we will tell their stories and illustrate how these and other communities can work together to shape their future through persistence, creativity and teamwork

Needle-Moving Community Collaboratives: A Promising Approach to Addressing America's Biggest Challenges

Communities face powerful challenges -- a high-school dropout epidemic, youth unemployment, teen pregnancy -- that require powerful solutions. In a climate of increasingly constrained resources, those solutions must help communities to achieve more with less. A new kind of community collaborative -- an approach that aspires to significant community-wide progress by enlisting all sectors to work together toward a common goal -- offers enormous promise to bring about broader, more lasting change across the nation

Expanding Economic Opportunity: Lessons From the East Baltimore Revitalization Initiative

This report reviews the economic inclusion efforts, achievements and challenges from the East Baltimore Revitalization Initiative. It examines the placement of local residents in construction jobs and the workforce pipeline that has trained and placed East Baltimore residents in jobs generated by the new development or elsewhere in the city, while also noting the complexity of creating project-related employment. It also reviews how East Baltimore Development, Inc. (EBDI) and its partners connected minority-owned businesses to the project and supported their growth. For context and comparison, this report cites examples of similar initiatives around the country. Finally, it offers various lessons learned over the course of the project to date. This report serves to inform and assist a range of people and institutions, including government leaders, businesses and nonprofits interested in economic inclusion

A Prospectus on Substantive Change

Prepared for The Commission on Colleges, Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges, October 1, 1987. For consideration by the Commission on Colleges at its December 5 and 6, 1987, meeting at the Salt Lake Hilton Hotel

Sandy's Mold Legacy: The Unmet Need Six Months After the Storm

Just over six months ago, Hurricane Sandy hit the shores of New York, bringing floods and standing water to neighborhoods across the tri-state area. But if the destructive capacity of flooding and water damage was bad, it soon became clear homeowners were faced with an even greater threat. Flooded homes not dried out within 24 to 48 hours were at serious risk of developing mold infestations, threatening the health and safety of thousands of New Yorkers. At the end of January 2013, city administrators created the privately funded Neighborhood Revitalization NYC program ("NRNYC" or "the program") to remediate 2,000 homes, responding to growing reports of mold contamination in the press.The organizations that drafted this report have engaged with the City and the non-governmental agency administering the Neighborhood Revitalization NYC program throughout the several months it has existed, and have been able to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the program. The city and program administrators have been extremely open to feedback, and many obstacles have been improved because of that openness. However, as the results of this study indicate, for a variety of reasons, the city's current approach to mold remediation post-Sandy needs expansion and improvement. Six months later, the acute need for mold remediation across New York City has not abated, and mold's disproportionate impact on low-income and immigrant communities has resulted in displacement, sickness, and continued crisis in Sandy-affected neighborhoods. Major community-based organizations with roots in those neighborhoods have stepped in to help construct solutions. Members of the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, a coalition of labor unions and community, faith-based, environmental and policy organizations across New York, have begun to survey residents in order to meaningfully assess the post-Sandy mold crisis across the city. In March and April, Faith in New York (formerly Queens Congregations United for Action), Make the Road NY, and New York Communities for Change conducted phone and door-to-door surveys across the Rockaways and in Staten Island, reaching almost 700 households. Feedback from residents forms the basis for this report's analysis of the threat of mold in hurricane-ravaged neighborhoods and our recommendations on how city leaders should respond to the crisis