Reforming Government - Courtney English

Atlanta’s Mayor Andre Dickens is undertaking the most ambitious city government neighborhoods initiative in the country. His goal is to not only throw the full weight of the city government behind neighborhood transformation efforts in a way that was previously unimaginable—City Hall played a relatively minor role in previous efforts, making collaboration across departments and the work in general much more challenging—but to change how the government itself functions. As he has written, “I am prepared to adopt the goal of 100% healthy and thriving neighborhoods as the central strategic imperative of my administration, and to reorganize the effort of government around that goal.

Neighborhood Safety - J. Reid Porter

Advocates for Community Transformation (Act) exists to see neighborhood safety become a normal reality for everyone, regardless of where they live. To do this, we equip residents who live in high-crime areas to fight crime on their street using the civil justice system. Act's model pursues justice for these families who live in close proximity to high-crime properties by building trust with them and pairing them with highly skilled law firms to hold the owners of these properties accountable for the criminal activity. The goal of Act's model is to see safer, more peaceful neighborhoods, but crime reduction is only a piece of a community's transformation. We are motivated by Christ’s challenge to seek justice. Every family has the right to live in a flourishing community. https://www.actforjustice.org/

Metrics and Evidence - Carol Naughton

Working collectively, Purpose Built and Network Members measure impact at both the performance and population levels.

Together the data, capacity, processes, and partnerships will be used to understand the impact of our efforts and the underlying story behind the data. We value qualitative data and first-hand perspectives of change alongside quantitative data from public sources. Our theory is that by committing to the following practices Purpose Built and Network Members will be better able to know, show and grow our impact. We will:

• Build shared language and a shared framework that connects performance to public/neighborhood level results
• Learn from the field and a cross-section of initiatives to adopt an agreed upon set of metrics that “roll up” for a collective story
• Include a range of metrics/measures of neighborhood transformation that reflect changes across place, people, and race: improvements in the built environment; improvements in quality and delivery of services; changing in individual, family, and other people-centered outcomes; and improvements in overall community cohesion and residents’ sense of belonging
• Garner agreement across the Network to use, collect, and report impact using the same metrics. All these efforts are part of a continuous improvement process towards the end of deepening shared understanding of what works and telling a collective story of our contributions to the long-term outcomes: improving racial equity, economic mobility, and health outcomes

https://purposebuiltcommunities.org/

Community-Centered Economic Inclusion - Tracy Loh

Community-Centered Economic Inclusion: An Equitable Model for Revitalizing Neighborhoods Across the Urban-Rural Spectrum:  Neighborhoods are the building blocks of strong cities and regions, but far too often, are overlooked as essential ingredients of regional and national prosperity. When economic development policy development and planning focus only at the regional level or higher, the intersections between opportunity, health, public safety, and climate resilience—which converge to impact lives on a hyperlocal scale—can be missed, as can the need for cross-sectoral action. This presentation will focus on lessons learned from the Brookings Institution’s and Local Initiative Support Corporation’s “Community-Centered Economic Inclusion” model – co-developed in 2019 and since implemented in over a dozen neighborhoods in ten states—with the goal of offering practical guidance for practitioners and policymakers to advance, scale, and sustain inclusive place-based development efforts that increase access to opportunity, quality of place, and quality of life in regions of all sizes.  

Related resources:

• Building inclusive and healthy neighborhoods, block by block: Findings from 11 neighborhoods nationwide
• Advancing inclusive development in rural towns: Actionable strategies for strengthening economic opportunity, quality of life, and quality of place
• Community-centered economic inclusion: A strategic action playbook

Remedial Banking - Daron Babcock

We need more people focused on tackling the systems that underlie poverty rather than focusing on the symptoms. For example, if you’re in banking and you want to contribute, help determine ways to bring appropriate financial institutions into these communities. This session will look at an innovative approach to finance targeting poor neighborhoods.

For more info, reach out to https://bontonfarms.org/