Building a Better Milwaukee
What you do now do more? do less? What have you started doing? stopped doing? What is scarcity and how do we recognize abundance? How can we all share our gifts for a better Milwaukee? Asking the right questions is truly important in our community building efforts. Safe & Sound has participated and collaborated with Marquette University’s Community Transformation Project since its inception and has learned to ask these questions and change how we view the challenges we face. Along the way we have taken the message of community building to heart and woven it into the work we do.
The individuals and groups we work with in Milwaukee’s neighborhoods are in seemingly intractable positions. Community building is important to not only to our neighborhood leaders, but our collaborators and our own organization. What makes the Community Transformation Project so unique is the combination of storytelling, experiencing of new tools, and inspiration for change.
As part of the Safe & Sound crime reduction strategy, the Community Partners Program contributes to stakeholder capacity building, collaboration, and action beginning with individuals seeking neighborhood change. The program is focused on building community and sustainable neighborhood change by using resident concerns with crime and blight as community building asset to inspire and develop neighborhood based leadership. Community building does more than remediate problems by leveraging resources like law enforcement and city service as well as referrals to employment and social services. We work to foster a fundamental transformation in high-crime/low-income neighborhoods that changes the circumstances of individuals by identifying individual and neighborhood needs and responding through outreach, meetings, activities and networking. We build stakeholder capacity by offering services, training, organizing functions and resources. The Community Transformation Project has informed these process and provided facilitation tools and training for strong resident involvement.
In addition, the Safe & Sound strategy is more and more focused on community building by strengthening the capacity of neighborhood residents, associations and institutions. This occurs by transforming the relationship with the outside systems such as law enforcement, youth services and city services. This change is based in neighborhood concerns and priorities but incorporates resources and services from outside of the neighborhood. The Community Transformation Project has worked with Safe & Sound to involve residents and facilitate conferences and trainings to better enable this change.
Community building is challenging work and we cannot succeed without the stories, tools and inspiration, as well as the strengths, experiences and talents of each other. Community building sends a message that resonates deeply, ‘this was always present; it is what we know to be right.’
If you and your neighbors would like to join the Community Transformation Project you can attend an upcoming session.
DOWNLOAD: Building a Better Milwaukee series flyer
