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Buildng Blocks for a Sustainable Future
Nexus Community Partners focuses its work in two areas: Community Engagement and Asset Building Initiatives. We know that alone neither focus area will result in building more engaged and powerful communities. However, by bridging these two areas we can help create an actively engaged community that has greater power over and responsibility for the decisions that shape their community and is in a better position to take advantage of various asset building opportunities. With the end goal being the achievement of more equitable and sustainable neighborhood revitalization.
Building Blocks for a Sustainable Future is an excellent example of how community engagement has strengthened the housing work on the East Side of St. Paul and fueled a larger neighborhood revitalization effort.
In 2008, with support from Nexus Community Partners and Invest St. Paul, East Side Neighborhood Development Company (ESNDC) embarked on an ambitious community engagement program called “Building Blocks for a Sustainable Future”. The program was created to engage with the community and to help them take control of their mutual self-interest in stabilizing the residential areas of the neighborhood hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. ESNDC targeted 20 city blocks within the Payne Phalen neighborhood. This area has the second highest number of foreclosures in the State of Minnesota and is weighed down by more than 100 vacant and/or foreclosed residential properties.
To date the “Building Blocks for a Sustainable Future” program has successfully brought over 100 renters, homeowners, and rental property owners together by employing a system of culturally and linguistically relevant outreach, organizing, and engagement. Many people confessed to never having attended a community meeting before and just as many stated that they didn’t even know their neighbors. Through a series of community planning workshops the community created a housing “Quality of Life” plan. ESNDC staff and resident leaders presented the housing “Quality of Life” plan to City officials, neighborhood organizations, community development entities and other decision makers and interested organizations. This outreach attracted the interest of numerous community development partners and City staff who wanted to work with a community that is engaged and invested in its future.
In 2010, ESNDC will deepen its work within the African American, Latino and Hmong communities, while bringing together the residents and the business community to develop a broader vision of long term community prosperity. This is a pivotal time for St. Paul’s East Side. In many ways, each challenge brings with it an opportunity for the community to reframe its future. But this can only happen if the community comes together. The residents, business people, property owners, organizations, and institutions must be brought together in all of their diversity to express the desired changes through a collective vision. This is a model and a lesson to be shared throughout our area.