I had an interesting experience on Saturday night. I was consulting with a woman who has started a community center in north central Houston and I was quite impressed by what she has pulled together. Go to http://aldineyouth.org/index.html and http://aldineyouth.org/html/history.html and have a look at the website for the Aldine Y.O.U.T.H. (Youth Organization United to Help) Center.
I called Sylvia at 7:30pm Saturday when I became available to meet and she came straight from a her previous engagement to meet with me (for over and hour and one-half) to discuss funding for a soccer program at her community center. I was pretty much awed by her energy and apparent commitment, but not surprised, as we had talked once or twice on the phone previously.
I was particularly interested in one aspect of her definition of community and want to share it with you. While most of the definitional components are familiar to us, she insisted on the importance of a limited geographical range (see website) for a couple of reasons. First, she didn't want to serve so many people that her clients became numbers and for whom she could only serve as a referral service. This is a "one stop shop." She wants kids to prepare themselves for adulthood through a variety of interactions, including business training. As she said, other people need to develop facilities in adjoining areas. She wants to do her piece of community development well and keep it going.
She noted that when people are referred out to services, they often elect not to participate because they don't want (or struggle) to travel. She is in the business of building relationships through which kids can develop and meet a range of needs. At present, Sylvia is working to obtain matching funding for facilities development. Have a look at her website and I will be open for conversation about this on Wednesday.
Ken
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3 comments:
I guess from an economic perspective the idea of expansion and economies of scale play somehow do not apply to this women's community program. Usually economies of scale thorugh the consolidation of the production of goods and services equates to less costs and a greater profit margin. The increased efficiency, however, is accompanied by, what I believe, a decrease in social interaction. Efficiency, oftentimes, necessitates the elimination of face-to-face services and the subsequent emergence of automated systems. Under the definition of community that this woman gave you, it would seem that community programs seem more sensitive to that trade off than do profit-maximizing firms. In her opinion, her program operates most efficiently by producing a specific service to a small market. Her interactive-intensive product loses its own identity as the geographic service region expands. All in all, a very interesting observation of community programs and their geographic service capacity.
-Matt
When I think about programs in which I participated as a youth, it was the neighborhood based park program that had the most appeal and my church youth group. Both were within walking distance; both provided an opportunity to be creatively engaged with supportive adults, but also had a lot of freedom.
I do think that high touch, personal connections are what makes a difference for young people. Having a limited geographic area is one way to ensure closer connections.
I had much the same experience as Linda and agree that high-touch can make a difference. For a small organization, though, finding funding for hyper-local services can be a real challenge.
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