Southwest Regional Community Garden Association

I love this internship!!! PRC wears so many hats in this community the learning opportunities are endless and often. I have been asked to represent my organization at the Southwest Regional Community Garden Association Conference. We provide technical assistance and financial support for 9 gardens in the Central City South area. Soon I will hopefully be given full reign of the project, so this weekend will be a huge learning opportunity for me, as I have never successfully grown anything in my life.

I will be attending four to five breakout sessions of my choice, a dinner with a night stroll at the desert botanical garden and a tour of many community gardens in the phoenix area. More to come on how it went!!!

Operation Wounded Warrior Queen Creek Arizona

A friend of mine told me about Operation Wounded Warrior a few weeks ago. This is a small 501(c) 19 organization that is operated out of the American Legion Post in Queen Creek. This organization is all volunteer based and 100% of their proceeds go to providing hospitalized soldiers with basic supplies and support. Their mission is to provide health and comfort items to military service personnel in medical facilities. Because all proceeds go to the soldiers, this organization has limited resources to get their word out so I thought I would share.

More information can be found at their website http://www.operationwoundedwarrior.org/ or on Facebook.

Careeer Services: Resume Writing Workshop

I attended the resume-writing workshop that is organized by the career service department. I found this workshop to be extremely helpful. The presentation gave me many good ideas on how to improve my resume. In addition, it discussed many common resume mistakes, many of which I have been guilty of making myself. One of the most helpful components of this workshop was the sample resumes provided. Each person was given a sample resume for the field they are trying to enter and their education level. The graduate level resume for someone entering the nonprofit field was unlike any resume sample I had ever received. Because it was related to my field of study I had the opportunity to use some of the language provided in the sample resume to improve my own.

After leaving the workshop, I immediately updated my resume. In addition, I took it back to career services and had it looked over again. As a result, I now have the highest quality resume I have ever produced. I also took all of the documents I received from career services including a resume words sheet, information on how to write a cover letter, sample resumes, etc. and put them in a binder for future reference. Not only have I referred back to this information several times I have also shared it with friends that are looking to improve their resume.

Making Home Affordable Event 3/24

Yesterday my Co-worker and I volunteered at the Making Home Affordable Event. Phoenix Revitalization Corporation runs an affordable housing program that monitors properties for the FDIC; therefore, we try to volunteer at events such as this when possible. There were many lenders and credit counselors at this event. People were able to come set up appointments with their lender and a counselor, it was like a one stop shop for all things mortgage related.

This event is sponsored by the Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of housing. Over the past year and a half, this event as served sixty cities across the country. I was assigned to administer the exit survey. While speaking to people about their experience there, their responses were expected. Some were happy and felt as though their questions were answers and they would be notified that their modifications had been approved within a few weeks. Others were disappointed because either the bank could not help them or they were sent away due to lack of documentation. Overall, this event was very well organized and majority of the people I spoke with were happy to be able to speak with their lender in person. This seemed to be a great way to help a large group of people in a short time.

Central City South Newsletter

Central City South is a community that is service rich. Organizations including Chicanos por la Causa, Friendly House and the I.G. Homes Boys and Girls Club are all housed in this community. However, in the past very few residents of this community accessed these services either because they didn't know they existed or they were simply apprehensive to walk through the doors. In order to combat this problem Phoenix Revitalization Corporation developed the Central City South Community Newsletter.

This newsletter is full of information about events and services within the community and in surrounding areas. In addition, local businesses and neighborhood associations can advertise in the newsletter free of charge. This professionally printed full color newsletter is hand delivered to 17,ooo residents bimonthly. It is also e-blasted to anyone who wishes to have a copy sent to his or her email. This tool has become the most successful piece of Phoenix Revitalization’s effort to connect community members and service providers. Residents and stakeholders look forward to the delivery of the newsletter, and for many this is the only tool they have to access information about their community.

Community Connection Fair

This weekend I spent some time at the Community Connection Fair in Matthew Henson Park. I enjoyed having time outside interacting with the Central City South Community. This was a great event, over fifty vendors were there handing out infomration on health services, city services and recreation opportunities. There was a great band and other entertainment, food and lots of give aways. I spent the day handing out dental health bags with the Tooth Fairy! (Thaks to Delta Dental) The kids loved it, the adults were appreciative of the goodies and I got to spend a beautiful spring day with the Tooth Fairy! Needless to say it is nice to get out from behind your desk once in a while and spend the day out and about.

Hope VI Project in Phoenix

The city of Phoenix was awarded the Hope VI grant to rebuild the historic Matthew Henson Public Housing. Since the completion of Matthew Henson Village construction to create the new Krohn West Hope VI community is in progress. The objectives of the Hope VI project are as follows:

HOPE VI Purpose and Criteria

• Reconstruct severely distressed and obsolete public housing units
• Revitalize neighborhood and create economic investment in the area
• Create incentives to encourage investment and form public / private partnerships
• Develop job linkages, training, and educational resources for area residents
• Establish mixed-use, mixed-income development and create homeownership opportunities
• Attract commercial and retail businesses

I have had the pleasure of spending some time in the new Matthew Henson Facilities and the Hope VI community center. In my opinion, this grant money was well spent. Matthew Henson Village is a clean and cozy neighborhood, full off fantastic amenities. Matthew Henson Park has a clubhouse, a playground, and a pool complete with a splash pad for young children. The Hope VI center offers plenty of community meeting places and many individual development classes for community members. In addition, there is a childcare center, a computer lab and a job resource center.

The thing I was most impressed with is the Senior Tower, an independent living affordable housing facility for seniors. Walking into the tower I was extremely impressed; the beautiful lobby looks that of an upscale hotel. It has soft couches, a fireplace and plenty of open meeting places for socializing. In addition, there is a pool with a large patio with tables, chairs and a barbecue.

In a small section of Henson Village, several of the original buildings have been preserved as a historical landmark. The small, rectangular buildings that once filled this area are in stark contrast to the beautiful work the City of Phoenix has done with this project

United Way Office Supply GIve Away

My organization was invited to an office supply give away today at Valley of the Sun United Way. They had collected gently used office supplies and invited nonprofit organizations across the valley to come and take whatever they could use. I left with binders, file folders, tape dispensers, paper trays, high quality office stamps and more! Everything we took was like new and will be put to good use. This idea is so simple and it could make a positive impact in many communities. We are accustomed to clothing and foods drives, but think of what a difference someone’s old office supplies could make in the life of someone who is working to open a small business or nonprofit. Just thought I would share.

Sherman Park

I had the opportunity to drive trough Central City South with my mother this week. One of the main reasons that I enjoy working with Phoenix Revitalization is that my mother grew up in this area, and always speaks with fondness of her childhood there. I was hoping to get a better understanding of where her houses were located mainly to find out if any of them were in the neighborhoods that PRC serves.

To my surprise, the first house my mother and her family lived in was in a neighborhood called Sherman Park. Sherman Park is one of the eight original neighborhoods to work with PRC. As we drove down the street, I suddenly recognized a house in the middle of the block. It was small, with stucco (which was unusual for the time it was built) and had a silver tin roof. Although I had never seen this house in person, my favorite picture of my mother as a child was taken in the front yard, so I instantly recognized it. My mother went on to tell me that her grandfather, my great grandfather built this house and the house next door. It was very neat to see that a little piece of my family history is still standing in the community that I am working with today. This is a great reminder of the rich history of Central City South that needs to be preserved.

Hope....

Central City South is a community that has been around nearly as long as Phoenix itself. This community is just south of downtown less than four miles away from the state capital. In its prime, Central City South was a close-knit working class community filled with locally owned grocery stores, dance halls, barbershops and more. According to residents who have spent their life there, this community was once incredibly closed knit and supportive of one, and other. As the suburbs were developed, and the airport grew Central City South became more isolated. Crime and blight rose and economic opportunity rapidly declined. Today Central City South his home to over 50% of the city’s public housing, suffers from an unemployment rate significantly higher than the national average and has seen some of the highest crime rates in all of Phoenix.

This week I was lucky enough to hear a resident of the Matthew Henson Senior Towers speak about growing up and growing old in Central City South. She showed a picture of the restaurant her father opened that was in stark contrast of the Central City South of today. This picture showed about 15 people sitting in her fathers small restaurant. They were black and white, young and old, all smiling and happy to be there. In the company of the high school football coach, people who lived in the neighborhood, and the elementary school music teacher was the world famous boxer Joe Lewis, the current mayor and the current governor. This resident went on to explain that aside from the heavyweight champion, those in this photograph were regulars at her fathers restaurant. In the Central City South of today it is not likely that the residents and high ranking public officalls will be casually dining together in this community. This disconnect is creating a loss of history and millions of untold stories of longtime phoenix residents. Today, in many ways the points of pride and the accomplishments of this community such been buried by fear and a loss of hope.

To close her presentation this resident began to describe her involvement with Phoenix Revitalization Corporation’s quality of life plan. The purpose of this plan was to bring community members together to create a document outlining the changes they want to see in their community and to discuss how residents like themselves are a valuable part of this change. There hopes for their community were things that most suburban areas take for granted. Things in the final quality of life plan include having a grocery store in the community, sidewalks in neighborhoods and streetlights to deter gang activity. It seems it would be easy for this resident to feel angry to see her community decline so drastically, but the message she sent was that of joy. She explained to her audience that the quality of life plan brought her hope that her community would once again band together and create a community even better then that of her childhood. Since the quality of live plan many funders have come to support Central City South, more and more community members are becoming involved with their neighborhood associations and the crime rate is dropping. It is amazing what a little hope can accomplish.