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NEIGHBOR CORPSCommunity ownership of systemic change is critical for real change to happen. Through the Neighborhood Opportunity Network, we are training 15-20 diverse leaders of different races, classes, and cultures to be a coordinating force and community-building arm of the Network in each of the three target neighborhoods – Long Branch, Wheaton, and Gaithersburg.
Neighbor Corps is a three-month program that helps participants achieve Network goals while building their collective capacity to increase their neighborhood’s well-being over time – long after the Neighborhood Opportunity Network ends. Each Corps serves as a bridge between their neighbors and the new HHS Neighborhood Service Centers. Participants build skills to share power across lines of difference, ultimately creating much larger circles of mutual support in neighborhoods. In close to 50 hours of formal training, the Neighbor Corps engages in leadership skill-building, community asset mapping, cross-cultural relationship building, and Network implementation. Teams organize and lead their neighbors in door-knocking, host or facilitate Neighbor Circles, and design and lead community-building events in each neighborhood. We also envision these cohorts creating new neighborhood groups, like resident associations, neighborhood advisory groups, or others, to influence and support the networks and environments created through the Network and at the Neighborhood Service Centers. Neighbor Corps is based on a successful multicultural leadership development program we have been running since 1998, first with diverse residents from greater Silver Spring (the Community Empowerment Program) and most recently with diverse renters from downtown Silver Spring, East Silver Spring, and Long Branch (the Neighborhood IMPACT leaders program). Read about the work of each Neighbor Corps cohort at our Network blog blog. |
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