The Neighbors Excelling Together Program (NExT) is a comprehensive, long-term approach to transforming neighborhoods. It builds community infrastructure, beginning with residents and other community stakeholders to build their capacity to voice their needs, develop appropriate strategies, and form the partnerships necessary to create good places to live, work, play, and raise families. The program is currently being implemented in nine neighborhoods in San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond with particular focus on Excelsior and Chinatown neighborhoods in San Francisco and Nystrom neighborhood in Richmond.
The program engages local residents and stakeholders to build solutions for their community in the following areas:
· Developing, preserving, and investing in the physical environment
· Increasing family income and wealth
· Stimulating economic activity, locally and regionally
· Fostering livable, safe, and healthy environments and lifestyles
· Improving access to quality education
At its core, the NExT Program empowers communities to articulate their vision of what they want their neighborhoods to be and to identify the resources needed to achieve their goals. It increases civic engagement and builds local leadership so that communities are able to rally resources and create partnerships to realize their vision. Underlying the NExT approach is the belief that community-driven change increases local accountability and enables the implementation of projects that reflect each neighborhood's priorities.
Each neighborhood effort has a local "convening" agency that engages the residents and other local leaders to identify neighborhood priorities and build the necessary partnerships to realize community goals.
Goal: Facilitating Community-Driven Change
By building the capacity of local stakeholders to collaborate and execute a shared vision, the goal of NExT is to build community infrastructure to create a long lasting voice for the neighborhood that will ensure local priorities are met. NExT is designed to strengthen communities from within - through planning, organizing and human development. This comprehensive approach broadens opportunities for local residents through better education, broader job choices, safer streets, new economic opportunities, and stronger personal finances.
Selection of Community and Local Convening Agency: Bay Area LISC selects a small group of neighborhoods to participate in the NExT Program, which allows for a deep and comprehensive local commitment, both financially and programmatically. During this phase, special emphasis is placed on selecting a local convening agency in each neighborhood whose role is to engage the community,build partnerships, coordinate programmatic efforts and serve as a hub for activity.
Stakeholder Mapping: Bay Area LISC collaborates with convening agencies to identify other nonprofit groups, local institutions, businesses, government, and residents who will be involved in developing neighborhood plans.
Listening Campaign: Convening agencies and their partners listen to local stakeholders to identify areas of greatest concern to local residents, which could include concerns such as affordable housing, community safety, economic revitalization, education, access to healthy food, among others.
Early Action Projects: Projects are identified during the planning process that address an immediate need. Stakeholders collaborate by carrying out the project.
Development of Neighborhood Plans: NExT neighborhoods undergo a structured community planning process that involves local residents and leaders to design community improvement strategies.
Execution of Neighborhood Plans: Convening agencies spend the next five years and perhaps more implementing their plans. Creating local and citywide partnerships, communities address issues including employment, parks and recreation, health care, housing affordability, commercial and retail development, child care, education quality, neighborhood aesthetics, and personal security.
The NExT Program emphasizes documentation and knowledge sharing. A central NExT strategy is to build social capital among participating communities, convening agencies, and support organizations. By documenting the activities and sharing strategies and methods through a website, meetings, training sessions, and other methods, NExT hopes to multiply the impact of each neighborhood's work while advancing knowledge of community development practice.
NExT's Resources include:
Technical Assistance: Includes LISC program staff who provide ongoing technical assistance and local staff placed at each local convening agency;
Grant and Loan Pool: Includes funds that support short- and long-term initiatives and serve as seed money to leverage other public and private resources;
Web Tools: Includes a website featuring regularly updated community news and interactive events calendar;
AmeriCorps Volunteers: Includes the placement of AmeriCorps volunteers at NExT program sites to support programmatic goals and pilot innovative new programs; and
Capacity Building and Peer-Networking: Includes training and networking opportunities provided between NExT sites and through Bay Area LISC's related programs, such as the Community Development Leadership Institute, Green Connection, Neighborhood Revitalization of Local Economies, and the Affordable Housing Program.
How the NExT Program differs from other community development initiatives:
The NExT Program offers a comprehensive approach to community development that builds upon the collective strengths of all community residents and stakeholders working in concert towards a shared vision. This approach differs from other community development initiatives in that it targets resources not only towards one or two local challenges, but towards a broad, holistic range of community-identified needs.
