Twin Cities Local Food

Twin Cities Local Food.

Perhaps this could be a good first step for the folks interested in a co-op on the East Side. Seems like a viable business model for getting farm-fresh food to our little food desert…

The Dream Shanty

So I entered this in the Minnesota Idea Open competition…
I got into the top 10% cut-off, but I didn’t make it through round two of cuts.
What do you think of it?

The Idea

Our little ice fishing shanty on wheels draws on an eclectic mix of successes, including the Art Shanty Project on Medicine Lake, NPR’s Storycorps project, and the famed impromptu block parties of Philadelphia. The Dream Shanty inspires initial connections through the comfort of shared food, merely setting the stage for building cross-cultural connections based on people’s dreams and gifts.
Neighborhood volunteers will build the Dream Shanty, which will feature a commercial-sized BBQ grill, a fold-down cooler for beverages, and perhaps a freezer for ice cream. Budding neighborhood chefs will highlight a diverse selection of ethnic foods, with nearby block clubs, faith communities, and youth ambassadors handling other tasks. Food and beverages will be a mix of potluck-style offerings and donations from local associations and nonprofits.
Using a Storycorps-inspired A/V setup, trained interviewers will get people talking in English, Hmong, and Spanish, with edited videos featured on a YouTube channel. While community meetings tend to focus on problems for outside agencies like police to solve, asset interviews focus on the gifts and vision of our neighbors as our main hope and resource.
Local, multi-ethnic artists will adorn the Dream Shanty inside and out, drawing on the theme of “gifts of the head, hands, and heart.” The air-conditioned interior will feature a self-contained, user-friendly A/V setup with a chair and a loveseat. Through a window, an edited video display of previous interviews will play on a loop.
Using an asset-mapping database, we will link interviewees’ gifts with commonly elicited dreams to create grassroots community project teams. Neighbors will act on their own behalf together, as neither constituents nor clients. The Dream Shanty will reach beyond typical “celebrate diversity” efforts to form deep bonds through shared vision, in a world where differences become assets.

Impact and Building Bonds Across Cultures

Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood’s once-beautiful housing stock is decaying in the aftermath of the housing crisis. For decades, local organizations—under white leadership—attempted to stabilize the community through homeownership programs, while gentrifying it with an historic district. But Wilder’s census reports indicate a continuous rise in low-incomes, rental households, and people of color, who now make up 54% of our neighbors, 61% of whom are renters.
The increase in rentership has irritated many homeowners, whose property improvements have yielded negative returns. Absentee landlords dominate the housing market; their low rents attract low-income families, but minimal upkeep and management creates instability as those families leave to seek better housing. A rise in cultural differences and high resident turnover chokes off the trust and connection neighbors might otherwise share, leading to a lack of community pride and a tendency for long-term residents to scapegoat renters—which, given the demographics, exacerbates racial tensions.
The Dream Shanty attempts to create an exciting way for neighbors to interact on a more regular basis than National Night Out. After living and working in the community for over 9 years, I’ve noticed we have very few places and occasions to gather; it’s my hope that if neighbors know one another’s names and see one another’s visions and gifts, the neighborhood can become a more stable place. Multimedia and social networking will further promote community conversations and inspire community pride.
In addition to the Community Council, other associations, nonprofits, and faith communities could partner to host Shanty Parties. Occasionally, local chefs might host a night. Neighbors could request it on their birthdays. It can be unannounced or narrowly promoted on a particular block. Where funds or partners can’t secure food, door-knocking and personal invitations could make it a potluck.

Implementation, Feasibility, and Impact

As a community connector, I’ve been surveying neighborhood assets for almost a decade. Partnering my fledgling effort, Dayton’s Bluff Community Asset Network, with the Dayton’s Bluff Community Council has built upon one another’s strengths. The Dream Shanty is a natural next step to convene the neighborhood around DB-CAN’s wide network, with support from DBCC’s capacity and organizational connections. Convening is the key to cross-cultural connection; meaningful conversations, to deepen those connections.
Rather than expecting marginalized people to reach into existing power structures or social networks, DB-CAN will seek out new immigrants and marginalized neighbors as the primary producers of the Dream Shanty. Organizational partners like Hmong American Partnership, 180 Degrees, and East Side Family Center are already helping DB-CAN find new voices and new gifts. These folks will comprise the core of Dream Shanty artists, cooks, interviewers, interview subjects, etc. Even if all this does is get people from different backgrounds to recognize one another’s giftedness—rather than their isolation, needs, or problems—this project will have been worthwhile.
As the project gains momentum, the Dream Shanty YouTube channel will promote a belief in abundance and community pride. Above all, the Dayton’s Bluff Community Council has pledged to seek additional funding to provide micro-grants for “Dream Projects.” These projects could build upon Shanty Party connections to beautify streets, create labor exchanges, or incubate businesses. Perhaps renters experiencing substandard housing might forge connections through this project that help bring about their own quality affordable housing. There is no limit to what can happen when neighbors implement their own visions with the backing of local institutions.
The Dream Shanty could become a highly reproducible model for promoting ongoing community listening and grassroots leadership in any neighborhood.

Light Rail and Equity in Seattle

I just got back from Seattle, where we visited my spouse’s West Coast work domain, as well as his stepmom Judi, brother Alex, and soon-to-be sister-in-law Rose. I had been planning an errand to research King County’s famous equity policies, but the rental car was just enough to get the spouse to work and back in excruciating rush hour traffic.
So instead, I found myself learning a lot about segregation, light rail transit, and the immigrant experience.
With regard to light rail: I don’t know how a city like Seattle—concentrated on a narrow strip of land, with so maritime commerce and large companies like Microsoft—would ever get along without it. They already had the express lanes, the high-occupancy lanes, and an incredible bus system (complete with electric busses downtown), and it just wasn’t enough. People wanted to arrive home at night in time to see their kids, and living close to any major economic hub costs a fortune. Still, every new addition of LRT is fraught with conflict, and the major line extends only between the airport and downtown. Future plans include a northward extension and a university extension.
Which brings us to inequity and the hope for something better.
What I noticed about Seattle is its incredible segregation. Rose’s family lives in a part of town in which local schools are majority low-income, and minority white. The high school is one of the worst in the state, and Seattle just passed a rule that public school students must attend their local school. When Alex first met Rose’s family, he claimed that he had rarely seen a person of color in Seattle, and was surprised at the concentration of marginalized folks in one small area.
In 2009, however, the LRT was built near their home. I’m going to take a wild, but fairly educated guess that the property takes and traffic disruption it caused were concentrated in the poorest areas of town, with the hopes of increasing economic development and—more cynically on my part—to minimize the number of voices opposing the project.
One might expect that the LRT would bring gentrification to the areas around the route. That it would force out families like Rose’s. But I noticed the still-high concentration of light-industrial and minority-niche shops along the route. A lonely high-rise condo sat on a key corner, with empty retail space on its fancy first floor. A local flea market took up a huge warehouse nearby, promising secondhand clothing and DVDs. The local playground was full of non-native English speakers and other people of color, gleefully enjoying the updated equipment and well-manicured grass. Meanwhile, Rose takes the LRT daily to her job downtown, allowing her to live at home with her family rather than pay the exorbitant rents elsewhere.
I dreamed of this for Dayton’s Bluff. How might our renters and low-income folks be connected to jobs downtown and in Woodbury if the Gateway LRT/BRT were built? And how might we ensure that such a project would bring in capital without pricing people out of their homes? In short, how does government stabilize the community even as it improves it? It’s my hope that such infrastructure projects on the Bluff would continue to encourage its diversity and lift everyone’s prospects.
I reflected on these “big ideas” most of my trip. But these abstractions were no match for the concrete experience of meeting Rose’s family, all filtered through my first-gen middle-class white female perspective. (But that’s for another day.)

Stories: Discovering Others’ Gifts: Re-humanizing Our Communities

Found this article on a recent site visit to Abundant Community.

Stories: Discovering Others’ Gifts: Re-humanizing Our Communities 02-28-2012 – Abundant Community

Another interesting video from Communities First Association. It reminded me again that no committee of developers can ever create rich community life:

Maddening, Indeed.

I didn’t want to get too personal. But this is the first of many blogs I’ll probably write about the interface between the self and community. This time it just happens to be about me.

I’m in Woodbury today. I’ve spent a couple weeks of being out of my comfort zone in my own community and becoming submerged in it. I’ve been meeting people who don’t look like me or speak my language, shopping at local businesses, walking up and down commercial streets, visiting community centers, chatting with organizational contacts, and emailing what feel like little messages in bottles from my desk at the Community Council. I’ve been driving my child to various appointments and daycare 15 minutes away.  But the rest of the time, I haven’t left the Bluff. After receiving news that my daycare provider was ill today, I took an opportunity to escape.

I’d like to say I’ve been creating potentially lasting, mutually beneficial relationships. But this has been lonely. The only people who really know what I’m doing are my two bosses, and they’re incredibly busy. I never see my friends between my jobs, RollerGirls practice, rehabbing my torn leg muscle, and the aforementioned driving. I started painting my son’s room last week, and I’ve managed to finish one wall. By the time my spouse and I sit down together at night, all I want to do is escape to TV or a novel.

I’m wondering how to balance this kind of life. I’ve long known that anyone with a focus outside their household—especially in human services or community work—is apt to have imbalance. I certainly remember as a high school teacher and theatre director, I’d spend few hours at home, with stacks of paperwork in tow. Now that I’m back outside the home, piles of laundry again begin to look like cruel practical jokes when I’ve been scanning the horizons of a community I love.

I’ve been tempted to start claiming smaller territory, narrowing my horizons, or lowering my standards for success. Building a cross-cultural team to survey the community’s assets seems so far to be an exercise in meeting scores of organizational leaders, and then finding ways to earn their trust so that they’ll connect me with team-members. So far I have one person, and I met her on my own.

Every once in a while, I’ll find someone who not only understands my vision, but shares it. But more often than not, I find those who misunderstand what I’m trying to do; who like it but don’t have the time to help; who write me off as an idealist; or—in once recent humiliation—someone who makes inappropriate advances.

I’m starting with the leaders, rather than neighbors, because there was this grant I helped get last June. But the thing about grants is that they have timelines that usually last one year. So as I was blissfully building relationships and networks for 6 months or so, I didn’t really make a project plan to create a measureable outcome. So now I’m working my networks, and the ones that seem to be the low-hanging fruit are any leaders I can reach.

I’m beginning to wonder if that was a mistake, but in the world of the nonprofit, the grueling yearly cycle means that you can’t spend much of your time in messy stuff like walking around, exchanging favors and recipes, chatting with counter-help, becoming a regular at the local thrift store, and chatting about deep stuff. Because all that activity—what I consider weaving the fabric of community—isn’t what you can get paid for. It doesn’t yield measurable results in short order.

But—done en masse—it’s the only thing that will ever counter the isolation and segregation of our culture. I need more time walking around the community. I need to bandy about my vision with my neighbors. How do you turn in a timesheet for that?

Just this morning, I was handed a binder of the latest grant requirements for a few foundations. While I love the work the foundations wish to accomplish, I find I’m less and less interested in doing them myself.

I want to connect people to one another, mostly. But the more I live in this world of the nonprofit, the more my brain betrays me, connecting people to programs—in essence, turning them into clients. Nevertheless,  if I want to map the assets of Dayton’s Bluff, I need capacity to do it. I need flyers and business cards and resources and researcher trainings and meeting spaces and childcare and inventory sheets and data analysis.

How long would it take me to find ordinary folks who could provide all that? Particularly unpaid volunteers?

I’m stuck in this moment with no one to talk to except the Internet. What an age we live in.

What I’m Doing…Is Crazy and Wonderful and Maddening

I’m in an incredibly blessed place.

For about the last three years, I’ve been delving deeper into the subject of community: what it is, how it’s formed, how to sustain it, and why it’s so rare in this culture. I tried to form community through charity and nonprofit formation at my old church, which largely failed. I joined with a small but intrepid group of de-churched Jesus-lovers to make a community here on the Bluff. That’s still growing. I studied neighborhood leadership at the Wilder Center for Communities, and its history at Minnesota History Center. I read loads of books on the psychology of community. And I fell in love with asset-mapping at an Asset-Based Community Development Institute retreat in Chicago.

So what the heck is asset mapping? It’s what I’ve been doing on my own for over a year now. I’ve been systematically listing all the assets–all the good things–our neighborhood has. Its places. Its associations. Its institutions. Its churches. And most daunting but important, the gifts of its people.

And lo, in the middle of my scattered slips of paper and to-do lists and Google maps, I was offered a job. Do your dream in 12 hours a week with the Dayton’s Bluff Community Council. Recruit a staff of researchers from underrepresented populations in the neighborhood. Train them. Listen to the community you love.

I keep gratefully asking myself, “Who gets to create their own dream job?”

I also keep following up with the question, “What if you fail at your dream job?”

How on earth does one break through decades of institutional racism and cultural isolation and Eastside melancholy to build hope again? Everyone around me says they “love the diversity” of this community, but then why is most everyone around me Caucasian, despite my efforts to broaden my network of friends and acquaintances?

So I keep contacting nonprofits and churches and friends and clubs, asking for references: Whom do you know in the community that loves this community and wants to see it grow? I get silence and gracious referrals and suggestions of where else to look. And I go deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole.

Moving From a “Problem-solving” to an “Asset-connecting” Mindset, Part II: Seniors

As measured by the 2012 census, 8.1% of neighbors in Dayton’s Bluff are persons over 65 years of age. When you add 55-65, that percentage climbs to 16.2%. That’s a lot of knowledge, wisdom, and experience among us. Are we harnessing those assets?

You may know a senior neighbors. You may have helped support our block nurse program that helps seniors stay independent in their homes.* You may have been curious about  what our Community Organizer Karin DuPaul cites as the three senior housing facilities in Dayton’s Bluff: Cerenity near Mounds Park; Parkway Gardens senior apartments on Old Hudson; and the highrise at 1300 Wilson. Also in the works: A revamped assisted living and Alzheimer’s care facility on 7th Street.

While I know where many seniors live, I’ve gotten a sense of disconnection from my senior neighbors. My son doesn’t have grandparents close by, and I’ve often brought him to the East YMCA to interact with seniors, even if only for a few moments. Every time we pass Parkway Gardens senior apartments, he begs to go visit the residents. But there’s this sense in me–however accurate or misguided–that I’m just not welcome there…that I’d somehow be a burden or an interloper.

As I look around and notice the general isolation that’s so endemic to our culture, I’m most haunted by the opportunities we all miss when we don’t interact daily with our senior neighbors. How might Dayton’s Bluff draw in and mobilize seniors’ gifts and dreams? How might we make more connections among us all?

Drawing again from the ABCD Institute’s Building Communities from the Inside Out, here’s a list of what some Chicagoland communities have been up to:

• A group of seniors worked with their neighborhood association to secure a loan from a local community development credit union in order to open a consignment shop administrated and staffed entirely by seniors.
• A nonprofit organization connects retired senior business executives with a wide variety of nonprofit groups in the city as part of an Executive Service Corps.
• A group of 10 to 12 trained seniors make telephone calls to get people involved in community activities at the Pilsen Neighborhood Community Council.
• A group of seniors that forms the Eastside Historical Society works for the local high school in space provided by the park system in developing a museum which documents the history of four Chicago neighborhoods.
• At the Lincoln Park Senior Center, a group of seniors presents skits, songs, historical presentations, and cooks southern-style food at local churches, synagogues, and other senior centers during Black History Month.
• The Kelly Library works together with the president of the local historical society to collect oral histories from senior citizens with the purpose of compiling a book that will chronicle the history of the neighborhood.
• Through the Illinois Intergenerational Project at Stateway Gardens Library, seniors from the Chicago Housing Authority senior building meet with fourth-graders from a local school once a week to conduct interviews with each other and as a result developed oral histories and act out skits based on the seniors’ lives.
• A local drugstore chain offers discounted prescriptions to seniors and works with medical school doctors and the seniors group in the community in order to provide educational programs at local churches on medications and their proper usage.

Could we do any of that here? What would it take? What might the community gain? I invite comment!

*If you want to support the Living at Home Block Nurse Program, they’ve got a fundraiser coming up on Saturday, April 21 at First Lutheran Church. Cost is $12-15 per person, and there’ll be music and prizes.

Why do you love the neighborhood? Part I, Housing

I was asked the other day why I love Dayton’s Bluff so much…and I didn’t know what to say.

I do love this neighborhood–deep in my gut. I have the kind of love for it like I do for my family and the landscape of my youth. I try to get my friends and colleagues to move here all the time. I know it as well as anyone who’s lived here nine years can. I know it better on paper than most statisticians. I get jealous every time another neighborhood gets yet another perk or service.

…So why can’t I explain why?

I used to say this kind of “cookie-cutter” phrase: “Well, we’ve got the best housing stock in the city, and it’s so diverse,” or more occasionally, “Our elementary school has won awards; it’s a hidden jewel.”

But the more I live here, the more I realize the flaws in my earlier naivete’.

When it comes to housing, I now know that Dayton’s Bluff may well be in the midst of a quiet but serious housing and land-ownership war. We’ve got the challenges other neighborhoods do: an increasing number of renter-occupied households with few gathering spaces to build community; absentee landlords; abandoned and vacant properties; and absentee landowners who lost their shirts in the real estate crisis, but refuse to sell their properties at a reasonable price for redevelopment. But here in our neighborhood, there’s more fuel for that fire. All of St. Paul has the classic problem of gentrification versus affordability, but here, it’s all complicated by an historic district designation across a large swath of the neighborhood. We’ve got a system that not only pits neighbor against neighbor on code enforcement, but also on historic accuracy of their exterior projects.

So post-housing crisis, here’s what you might experience in a small area of Dayton’s Bluff:

• One neighbor puts up his house on a short sale for $40k on what, even in this market, should be a $100k home.
• Across the street, another neighbor spends nearly $20k on a required redesign and rebuild of their unsafe and dilapidated historic porch
• Nearby, an absentee landlord from Chicago does a quick weekend tear-off of an unsafe and dilapidated historic porch, incurring modest fines
• Down a block, renters looking for quality affordable housing can’t find a ready-to-occupy, well-kept, and reasonably priced property worth raising their kids in–despite over 8 units sitting empty.
• The remaining homeowners with conventional loans grow angrier and angrier at their inability to refinance on their underwater mortgages, unable and unwilling to improve their properties.
• On the corner sits the abandoned shell of a once-beautiful historic home for which no one will take responsibility.

Is that a pretty good summation? Anything I missed?

So whom can we expect to help us? Nonprofits fight quietly over the dwindling funds that shift focus with what’s hot every year. State and federal governments can’t seem to get anything done. The city–in desperate need of funding after horrible disinvestment by the state–is desperate for fines and fees, and is unable to make the purchases they once did to buy and rehab properties. Banks are hoarding their monies waiting for the other shoe to drop, biding their time and doing as little as legally possible to upkeep their reclaimed properties.

Who’s left?

Us.

After nine years in this neighborhood, I think I finally know what I love: the type of person who chooses to live here. In general, they want a low-crime lifestyle without the expense of an upscale strip mall nearby. They’re rugged. They think on their feet. They generally come from working-class, immigrant, or union roots–or are at least attached deeply to them. They love at least the idea of diversity (more on that later). And these old houses and their potential is what makes a lot of them sing. Even if they’ve never touched a saw, new homeowners around here take passion in learning how to care for these old places. And all the renters I’ve talked to love the historic character of their apartments and want to be a part of shepherding them on.

I want to know what is already here–in the gifts, talents, passions, and purses of my people–that could help us to help ourselves. Another reason I’m so crazy about asset-mapping.

What are your ideas? How could we mobilize what we already have to improve this housing mess?

Coming: Part II, Diversity

Slow-going…But a lot coming?

So there’s a lot of planning going on in Dayton’s Bluff and the Near-eastside at the moment…

• The Eastside Co-op working group is setting up their governance structure and raising funds for site exploration.
• The Dayton’s Bluff Community Council is working with the city and the Dayton’s Bluff Business Association on the “Make it Happen on 7th” initiative to develop our business district.
• In addition, the DBCC is moving forward with DB-CAN to increase community engagement in the neighborhood, using community listening sessions and asset-based development tools.
• Gateway 94 has recently received more funds from the Counties Transit Improvement Board to finish their transit study which may bring light-rail or bus rapid-transit to 7th St.
• The East Side Prosperity Campaign is sponsoring an “Engage East Side” initiative to get community members involved in improving transit on the East Side.
• Merrick Community Center has a lovely design for a brand-new facility on Railroad Island, with community meeting space and classrooms for healthy-lifestyle programming in the works.
• MnDOT has received the go-ahead for lane expansion on I-94 near Mounds Boulevard through the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), with construction to begin in spring of 2015.
• The Lower Phalen Creek Project is getting traction with their dream of connecting the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary to the Mississippi River with a bike/pedestrian bridge.
• Metro State University is expanding, and they’ve got big plans for a parking garage and student union to take up the entire block bound by 6th, Maria, 7th, and Bates.
• Youth in Transition, a group for teens leaving the gang-lifestyle, is working on developing a recording studio with an artist-in-residence at Dayton’s Bluff Rec Center.
• My church, Imago Dei, is developing its mission statement and getting ready to dirty our sandals in the neighborhood as a partner with DB-CAN.
• First Lutheran is working in concert with their new missional church partner, Shobi’s Table, to develop indigenous leaders from their old “Love Grows Here” Thursday-night ministry.
• Might there be a move in the works for the DBCC offices, including a welcome center for the neighborhood?
• I’ve heard rumors of a new restaurant and cafe…

Seems like a lot of planning is going on in our little part of the world. It does make one impatient for action, though. So many of us need to see change in order to believe it. Planning and networking can be exhausting!

What are you involved in? What else is out there? What’s exciting to you right now?

Moving From a “Problem-solving” to an “Asset-connecting” Mindset: Youth

I’ve noticed that when neighborhoods start gathering, they seem to start with a “problem-solving” mentality. Fact is, a lot of Americans need problems to draw us out of our well-guarded private lives. We meet in order to “vent” about problems, and our next step–if there are any action steps taken–is to seek a government or sometimes a nonprofit organization to listen to our problems so that they can solve them. As John McKnight likes to say, “We outsource our problems.”

Alternatively, if neighbors are lucky, their little association or block club will organize further, attempting to create some action steps which they hope a governmental or other organizational body will adopt as the solution to their problems. They present said solutions, then step back and wait for implementation. Sometimes they use phone or email pressures to lobby for movement, and sometimes the action plan becomes a casualty of busy private lives. In Minnesota, the Great Killer of Momentum is often our long winter.

Fact is, most neighborhood problems can’t be solved by block clubs, the police department, or community councils. The bad landlord or neighbor down the street might finally get shaped up or shipped out, but come spring, another one will often take her place.

This cycle is exhausting, and I’ve seen many a neighbor completely burned out by their efforts to “put out fires.” That’s why I’ve chosen to leave the problem-solving mentality entirely. It’s not that I don’t want to see problems solved; on the contrary, I want to change what I see. Instead of seeing problems, I see assets.

An example: Instead of spending my energy gathering neighbors to lobby city officials about bad behaviors and problem properties, I look for ways to mobilize and connect neighborhood assets–good behaviors and treasured places. The hope is that in focusing on increasing community connection, we’ll all feel a lot prouder of what we have; moreover, that pride and involvement will translate into neighborhood safety and economic growth.

Here are a few examples of connections neighborhoods have fostered across the country that have produced positive results (with thanks to John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann for their Building Communities from the Inside Out):

Youth + Rec Center + Community Council = At our very own Dayton’s Bluff Recreation Center, youths who want to leave gang culture learn how to rap about their feelings and hopes through a local artist-in-residence. With help from the community council and others, the youths build their own recording studio and have it staffed with a studio “trainer,” who teaches kids how to use the production equipment.

Youth + Community Center = At a youth community center in Detroit, employees do research on community organizations and institutions. Youths interview leaders or administrators at churches, schools, hospitals, businesses, healthcare centers, and other organizations. At the end of the summer, the youth post a community forum to inform people about the resources in their community.

Youth + Community Organizations + Churches  = Nashville community organizations form a coalition to build a cement basketball court for a church, rehab housing, paint murals, design puppets for a parade, and develop a “toxic tour” of the city’s hazardous areas to educate residents about health issues.

Youth + YMCA = Youth are selected by YMCA staff and resident managers of housing developments to participate in a six-month fitness and leadership program. At the end of the training, the youth will be certified Y fitness leaders. They will structure and operate after school and Saturday night programs for other youths in the neighborhood.

Youth + Community Development Corporation + Police + Parks & Rec = The Northwest Side Community Development Corporation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin organizes a small group of youths to renovate a small park. A police officer helps the youth find funding and assists with writing of the proposal. The youths plan to approach businesses in the area for more funding. The major piece of their work will be the renovation of an abandoned community center at the park in order to make it available for public use.

Youth + Parks & Rec + Churches = At Youth in Action of New York City, youths gain ownership of an empty lot and transform it into children’s park. They paint a huge mural on the wall of the church facing the park and renovate the basement of the church to create a youth center.

Schools + Historians + City Council = In Prairie Village, Kansas, fifth and sixth graders participate in an innovative educational program that takes them on tours around their neighborhoods to learn about buildings in the process of community planning. Then the students create their own walking tour and slide presentation about the community. When officials of their town proposed razing an old barn to make a parking lot, 90 students went to City Hall with information about the barn’s historical significance to the community.

Youth + Local Businesses = Through the Youths as Resources Project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, youths contribute to the economic development of their communities by rehabilitating housing. They’re paid and earn school credit. An industrial council made up of local businesses provides raw materials and offers talks, tours, and job training for the youths. Many of them eventually start their own businesses or are employed by one of the local businesses.

Youth + Senior Center = In Chicago, when latchkey kids are feeling lonely, experiencing a crisis, or just want to chat, they can talk to community elders on the telephone through the “Grandma Please” program.

Youth + Senior Center + State Government = Several elders from Lincoln Park Senior Center in Chicago are paired with foster children at a neighborhood day care center. This partnership is facilitated by the Illinois Department of Aging.