IMPACT Silver Spring offers tools and processes for personal and group capacity-building, action, and transformation. Our projects are designed in response to what we hear and learn from our community network.

In light of how residents are experiencing the economic downturn, we created many of our current activities to address these issues. Key projects are:

• The Neighborhood Opportunity Network: a major engagement effort that is transforming social service delivery to lower-income residents in Long Branch, Wheaton, and Gaithersburg, involving neighbors in their own economic recovery.
  
  
• Neighbor Corps: leadership cohorts that support the Neighborhood Opportunity Network and build long-term networks of mutual support in target neighborhoods.
  
  
• Economic Empowerment: a variety of supportive financial programs designed to build long-term economic stability and opportunity among diverse residents.
  
  
• Parent Educators: a group of diverse parents building their empowerment and workforce skills in education, serving as teaching assistants in after-school literacy programs.
  
  
• School Transformation: a group of parents, teachers, and principals at Piney Branch Elementary School who are creating a vision for equity and a multi-year action plan, shifting school culture, policy, and practices in support of all children’s achievement.
  
  
• Silver Spring Network Building: ongoing events, activities, and opportunities that support relationship-building and exchange in Silver Spring across lines of difference.