Community Connections driven by neighborhood’s goals for children

Small-grants program lets residents take the lead

The Skillman Foundation is putting its money where its mouth is when it says the Good Neighborhoods Initiative is a resident-led initiative – right up to and including decision-making about funding.
“Community Connections grants are small grants – up to $5,000 – that can be initiated by residents if they see an unmet need for children in their neighborhood,” says Sharnita Johnson, Skillman’s program officer who oversees the Community Connections grants. “The initiative was established to make the Good Neighborhoods program more responsive to residents by giving them the opportunity to personally advance the neighborhood’s goal for children.”
Since only nonprofits with audited financials of at least $100,000 annually can receive foundation funding, individuals cannot apply for funding to develop a project in their neighborhood. As a result of the Foundation’s partnership with Prevention Network, the Community Connections program is designed so that residents, youth and families can partner with a smaller nonprofit, which will serve as the fiduciary for the grant.
“This not another way for larger nonprofits to access Skillman funds to support their core business,” says Johnson. “Our primary grantmaking serves that purpose. Community Connections supports funding for resident-initiated projects and programs.”
In fact, the applications are peer-reviewed, meaning that the neighborhood residents make recommendations regarding which applications should receive funding. A resident panel of people from the neighborhood meets monthly to review Community Connections grant applications, and Prevention Network facilitates the review process. The goal is to have full representation from each of the Good Neighborhoods as the program evolves.
“The resident review panel is a hardworking group of people,” says Lisa Leverette, Community Connections coordinator. “To meet every month and read dozens of applications is very demanding work. What drives them is their love for the children and their excitement about the innovative projects they see coming out of the neighborhoods.” The grant application process itself is a learning experience, Leverette says.
“One applicant received technical assistance for two rounds before she was ultimately funded. Technical assistance is available to the applicant throughout the application process and is also available if the applicant is declined and wishes to reapply. This particular applicant was not only funded, she went on to become a valuable member of the resident review panel.”
Community Connections grants, along with small learning grants, also serve to infuse resources immediately into neighborhoods to get momentum going on the ground while the lengthy planning process rolls out.
“People get bored with planning,” Johnson says. “They want to get started doing the work. The Community Connections grants allow them to resource action projects that can have an immediate impact on kids as soon as the neighborhood goal is determined by residents.”

Youth empowering youth
In the Vernor neighborhood on Detroit’s Southwest side, a group of young people is not waiting for adults to provide needed programs. Instead the group has established its own nonprofit and has received a Community Connections grant to launch a mentoring program for girls in the neighborhood.
Jennifer Webb, a University of Michigan student who was born and raised in Southwest Detroit and graduated in 2005 from Renaissance High School, is passionate about bringing quality sustainable programming to an area with few opportunities for youth. She and seven of her friends – all college students or young professionals – founded a nonprofit, Destiny Investment Initiatives, Inc.
“I thought of the kind of programs I wish had been available to me, and I was determined to see that these programs were available to other girls in my neighborhood,” says Webb, a 19-year-old junior majoring in public policy. “I have become very passionate about community development and youth empowerment.”
The mission of Destiny Investments Initiatives is “to develop young women into purpose-driven and destiny-minded women who will be paragons of excellence, integrity, and nobility.” Webb believes that this can best be accomplished by empowering girls spiritually, intellectually, and financially.
The group offered personal and professional development workshops with 15 girls on topics as hygiene, etiquette, drug prevention, presentation skills and leadership.
The mentoring program has received much acclaim and has given rise to a second generation of young leaders: Four of the initial group of girls who were mentored have established their own nonprofit, Young Ladies of Distinction, in order to engage in program planning and workshop facilitation for their peers. This new nonprofit has also applied for and received a Community Connections grant for “Ladies in Leadership Catalyzing Change,” a two-week program focusing on personal development and empowerment for girls.
“Running their own nonprofit gives them an opportunity to demonstrate through direct application some of the concepts they have learned in the Destiny Investment Initiatives mentoring program,” Webb says. “This is our way of empowering young women to be the next generation of leaders.”

Becoming financially stable
Osborn resident Sabrina Young wanted to ensure that young people avoided making the same financial mistakes she had made. She founded the nonprofit Sabrina Young and Associates, which offers a financial literacy program for youth in the Osborn neighborhood that is funded by a Community Connections grant.
“Statistics show that many adults are facing a serious financial crisis because of spiraling debt and little or no savings,” Young says. “We have the power now to help our children to avoid common financial mistakes by helping them grow up money smart.”
The group offered an eight-week program called, “How Money Works for Kids,” which helped 25 students ages 10 to 18 learn simple financial strategies that will make them better equipped to deal with money matters later in life. The class explored topics such as saving money, budget basics, credit cards, philanthropy and the financial advantage to starting young. In the final week, Young met with the parents and implemented a savings and budgeting plan for every family. Each child opened his or her own savings account at Fifth Third Bank, which offered to open accounts for all the kids with a parent’s signature.
Young’s catch-phrase: It doesn’t matter how much you make, it matters how much you save. She drives home the point by explaining that someone making $30,000 a year who saves 10 percent of their income will be more secure than someone who earns $100,000 a year but habitually overspends by 10 percent. The person with the lower income ends up with $30,000 in savings in 10 years, while the person with the larger income ends up $100,000 in debt in10 years.
Young also stresses to young people the importance of philanthropy.
“Our children need to know that they can go to college, live a better life and give back to their community with what they have and not keep looking at what they do not yet have,” she says.
Young’s involvement in Good Neighborhoods includes serving on the Community Connections resident-review panel as well as on the Special Opportunities Action Planning Team for Osborn.

Collaboration for kids
In Brightmoor, the community took a different approach that led to reaching more children in the area. Five neighborhood organizations collaborated to offer four continuous weeks of summer day camp for 67 neighborhood kids, ages 5-17.
“The collaboration helped us reach more kids than we expected,” says Cynthia Wishart, director of St. Christine Christian Services. “Attendance far exceeded our goals.”
St. Christine Christian Services and Shurly Family Learning Center recruited children, Corpus Christi Parish provided transportation and facilities for the camp, Leland Missionary Baptist Church parking lot was a pick-up point for gathering kids, and Northwest Detroit Youth Coalition provided additional financial assistance. Young people had a home-cooked breakfast and lunch every day, participated in fun and enriching activities, and made some very close friendships, according to Wishart.
“It was great watching the older children develop a protective interest in the younger children and seeing them respond positively with one another,” she says. “There was a tremendous amount of bonding between students.”
Children 10 and older participated in an overnight lock-in. Other activities included basketball, music, dance, arts and crafts, money management, and a trip to Henry Ford Museum.
“My biggest joy was watching 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds outside playing games with the younger kids,” Wishart says.

Children-led program, policies
The Westside Cultural and Athletic Club’s seven-week summer camp stands out for three reasons: it has been running continuously for 31 years in Southwest Detroit’s Chadsey/Condon neighborhood; it served 160 children ages 5-18 this past year; and children set the policies and program.
“During the winter, the young people who attended the summer camp form committees to determine next year’s program,” says Ericka Wright, executive director, who coordinates the program. “There is a policy committee, a program committee, and a field trip committee.”
As a result, the camp offers innovative activities, such as an Adopt-a-Grandparent picnic in which kids host seniors, or a teen club in which young people serve as assistant coaches, play leaders and aides. Other activities include a football clinic, a basketball tournament, arts and crafts, life skills, conflict resolution, literacy and nutrition.
“My favorite activity is a contest for teenage boys to see who could come up with the most nutritious meal plan,” Wright says. “The winner got to see his menu prepared and served to all the other kids.”
The children harvested fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and blueberries in the Youth Adult Neighborhood Commitment Park, also funded by a Community Connections grant.
“They got to actually taste the difference between food that has been processed to death or has sat in a truck and on a grocery shelf for weeks, and food that has just come out of the ground,” Wright says. “They were amazed.”
A Community Connections grant helped to provide better equipment for the summer camp, extend services to a greater number of kids and expand field-trip activities.
These stories illustrate only a few of the many Community Connections grants, totaling more than $250,000, that have been awarded during the first year of the Good Neighborhoods program in the four neighborhoods – Brightmoor, Osborn, Vernor, and Chadsey/Condon – that have completed the planning process. Each of these grants has helped neighbors to realize the neighborhood goal for their kids.
This modest small-grants program is truly the heart and soul of the Good Neighborhoods program. It reflects the values that ground the initiative – the belief that the residents know how to do what needs to be done for children to grow up safe, healthy, educated and successful in their neighborhood.

By Edith Assaff, a Berkley-based writer who has chronicled the Good Neighborhoods program since its inception.