Spotlight on Resident Voice and Community Ownership
Community development, at its core, helps residents create their own shared future. This concept of self-determination – also known as community ownership – is fundamental to LISC’s work, as we recognize that both our own investments and others from the public and private sector need to be directed by local voices. This Spotlight for the Institute for Community Power highlights contemporary efforts to advance community ownership by bringing residents together to elevate their voices and decision-making abilities. In it, we look at three programs designed and implemented by LISC and local partners: Training for Trainers (T4T) in Houston; the Newark Resident Leadership Academy (NRLA); and Community Connectors in Philadelphia.
Community development, at its core, helps residents create their own shared future. This concept of self-determination – also known as community ownership – is fundamental to LISC’s work, as we recognize that both our own investments and others from the public and private sector need to be directed by local voices.
Prioritizing community ownership also means recognizing that community development has always been buoyed by social movements for justice, equality, and dignity. From the early 20th-century labor activists and immigrants who helped establish some of the first affordable cooperatives in the US, to the Black farmers and civil rights activists who fought land theft to develop the first community land trusts (CLT), to neighborhood movements that countered redlining to establish community development corporations and pass the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) – ordinary people have come together to meet their own needs and change policy in ways that have benefited communities around the country.
This Spotlight for the Institute for Community Power highlights contemporary efforts to advance community ownership by bringing residents together to elevate their voices and decision-making abilities. In it, we look at three programs designed and implemented by LISC and local partners: Training for Trainers (T4T) in Houston; the Newark Resident Leadership Academy (NRLA); and Community Connectors in Philadelphia.
As powerful as these programs are, it’s important to note that these are not the only kinds of initiatives that advance community ownership.
Some operate at the grassroots level, bringing new voices into conversation with each other. For example, in Indianapolis, Englewood CDC’s Cultivating Communities program brings congregations and their leadership to lead economic mobility and neighborhood revitalization work. LISC’s research team recently highlighted efforts in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. to support tenants to organize and take control of their own buildings. Still other grassroots programs work with artists and culture-bearers to expand the reach and impact of traditional community development activities to new constituencies.
Initiatives to promote community control also operate at the level of the local organization, helping build and strengthen longstanding and emerging groups that can address the root causes of community challenges. LISC’s organizational development and capacity-building practices promote this kind of organizational strength. Still others occur at the systems level. For example, in Chicago, community planning has both built neighborhood agendas for change and formed powerful coalitions to carry them out.
In addition to the in-depth look at leadership development in Houston, Newark, and Philadelphia, you’ll find some additional resources below, and we welcome your feedback and questions.
Feature
This spotlight looks at three leadership development programs designed and implemented by LISC and local partners: Training the Trainers (T4T) in Houston; the Newark Resident Leadership Academy (NRLA); and Community Connectors in Philadelphia.
Resources
Facilitating Power, The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership
This spectrum can be used by local governments and by non-profit organizations or community groups working to facilitate community participation in solutions development and decision-making. It is designed to acknowledge marginalization, assert a clear vision, articulate a developmental process, and assess community participation efforts.
Building Movement Project, Tools to Engage: Resources for Nonprofits
An interactive, multi-level search portal that connects people and organizations looking to align the values and principles of their work to the best tools, research, and resources from across the social sector.
Organizing Engagement, Models
Compilation of introductions to some of the more influential and widely used organizing, engagement, and equity models created over the past several decades.
Communities Creating Healthy Environments, Language Justice Toolkit: Multilingual Strategies for Community Organizing
A collection of specific, practical strategies for organizations and individuals who are committed to building powerful multilingual spaces in their own workplaces and communities.
Community Wealth Partners, Sharing Power With Communities: A Field Guide
This field guide offers practical tips and examples to help you authentically engage and share power with the communities most impacted by your work.
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Transformational Capacity Building
Nonprofits that serve communities of color struggle to survive because of systemic racial disparities and biases. To surmount these challenges, we recommend seven approaches that have emerged from our work with these communities.
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Systems Change: Making the Aspirational Actionable
This article applies a social justice framework to help organizations identify the root causes of inequities, and design programs and strategies accordingly.
The Forge, Building Resilient Organizations Series
This series of articles explores practices to build strong, equitable community-based and basebuilding organizations.
Systems Change Philanthropy Resource Library
A resource library with reports, toolkits, and frameworks to help practitioners understand systems change and its different components.