The following is a transcript of Episode 2 of The Community Effect Podcast.
Listen here: https://thecommunityeffect-nw.podbean.com/e/episode-2-thriving-together-comprehensive-community-deve/
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): Welcome to the second episode of the Community Effect. Today, we're diving into the heart of community development. I'm your host, Marietta Rodriguez. We're focusing on how the comprehensive approach that we use at NeighborWorks America is supporting strong, vibrant and equitable communities. Joining me today is Elizabeth Druback Celaya, our Director of Community Initiatives, who has a view on many of our projects around the country.
Elizabeth, thank you for joining me today.
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Thank you, Marietta. It's great to be here.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): Let's first, Elizabeth, get started by grounding everyone in our terminology. What does comprehensive community development mean at NeighborWorks?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): So, comprehensive community development is really a community-driven, place-based and intentional effort aimed at improving lives and strengthening communities.
I think of CCD, really more than anything, as a way of working in community. It's really about thinking broadly, beyond silos, and centering residents as the experts in their own experience and solutions to community challenges. And CCD is really grounded in place, so it recognizes the importance of where a person lives and all of the pieces of a community, and it focuses on holistic approaches to addressing community challenges.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): And your shorthand version of comprehensive community development is CCD, right?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Yes. We do call it
CCD for short.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): So now that we sort of understand what that means, tell me why is it important? Why should our listeners care about it?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Well, what we know is that communities that have a comprehensive community development approach are able to respond more nimbly and more effectively to challenges. And so when we are talking about things like natural disasters, pandemics or community crises of any kind, having the strong partnerships, the trust with residents, and that deep commitment to place really makes a significant difference in both meeting pressing needs and moving long term priorities forward.
So, a CCD approach does a couple of things. It increases the responsiveness of policy and programs to local conditions, which creates more sustainable solutions, but it's also working for the long term and we need to break out of the cycle of isolated responses and be proactive to building up the conditions that allow for long-term growth in equity and opportunity and CCD does that.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): Now, are there guiding principles that anchor the comprehensive community development approach? And if so, share a few of those before we get into some specific examples.
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Yes, so NeighborWorks is so grounded in communities and our 45-year history of working closely with folks across the country means that we have really been able to distill some practices that are crucial to doing CCD work well. And so we call these our guiding principles. The principles of CCD are that they are grounded in place, so that's really focused on a specific geographic area. It's community driven, really centers resident voice and lifts up resident leadership, builds cross-sector partnerships to grow capacity and aligned resources.
It layers strategies and likewise it layers investment to achieve those strategies. It has a guiding vision that unites people and that uses multiple forms of data, both quantitative and qualitative. And it requires a commitment to long-term work in place. And so another principle is that CCD also works best when there's a guiding organization.
Sometimes we call that a backbone or a quarterback organization. And that organization is providing leadership and really being bold and setting out that vision for positive change, and NeighborWorks organizations frequently fill that role.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): You mentioned earlier that we have a rich 45-year history in this work.
We are celebrating our anniversary this year, and this is an approach that we've used throughout our history. But has this approach evolved over time? And if so, what have been some of the innovations or changes to the comprehensive community development approach that we’ve seen?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Yeah, well, I think we have really taken on a much stronger lens of applying equity and centering residents to the work as well as continuing to sort of lift up the entrepreneurial solutions that we see being developed by communities and serving the unique needs of places. And so, as we've seen our communities evolve, we naturally have evolved our approaches within the comprehensive community development sector.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): I hear you say how it's very place based, it's very localized.
What appeals to communities about this approach? What makes them engage at a level that makes it effective?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Well, I think what we see is something that we can all relate to, is that people want to be heard. Right? And CCD is really about hearing people. And the other thing that it does is it gives us a really important framework to approach change across difference, which is so especially important right now.
So through this idea of setting out a shared vision. Unified strategy, collaborative structure, comprehensive community development really can break down barriers. It can lead to more inclusive and equitable engagement in our work. And it really allows the issues of greatest importance to residents to rise to the top.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): This all sounds so positive and so exciting for a community, but what can be some challenges or obstacles that communities face when adopting this approach?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Well, I think many times people think of this approach as an either/or scenario. You know, if we're doing CCD, we're not going to be able to do these other things, but it's really a both/and approach, right?
We're talking about layering in resident engagement, layering in an inquiry around policy, kind of having that willingness and ability to focus not only on the individual change that we're creating for individuals and households, but also on the change that we are creating in communities as a whole.
It does require a different way of working, right? So it's not business as usual, meaning top down, bringing in outside expertise, disrupting or erasure of existing assets. It's really a collective, intentional, resident centered approach and that shifting in, in the way of working can be difficult.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): What makes comprehensive community development more effective than individual project-based initiatives?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Yeah, well, it really takes into account the complexity of place, you know, and we all know intuitively the impact of place, but in recent years, data has really backed that up, right?
Showing how critical places to things like health outcomes, educational outcomes, access to economic opportunity, um, and so much more. And so when we look at things through this lens, where we're really breaking out of our silos, where we're not working in isolation, but we're really coming together around common challenges.
That's what's really going to move the needle on this work.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): Elizabeth, let's, let's go into some specifics and some real world examples. Can you talk us through a community that has benefited from the comprehensive community approach?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): One that comes to mind, and it's one that we recently profiled in a set of case studies on comprehensive community development that we're going to be releasing is a small city in the northeast, and it really exemplifies the NeighborWorks CCD guiding principles.
So this community has layered in a variety of strategies in a place that was facing high number of vacant lots, poor quality housing, lack of opportunity for youth, growing homelessness. Challenges that probably sound very familiar to many communities. So this organization partnered with Habitat for Humanity to develop over 60 single family homes in a very focused area.
And these are all homes that are made available to lower income, first-time homebuyers. So now you're layering in the opportunity not just to have access to affordable housing, but to build wealth. So in addition, in the same neighborhood, they created a community resource hub to offer stabilizing services to the community at large.
So whether that's food, recovery support, housing referrals, and then they layered in a social enterprise business that they developed. That employs youth and pays young people a living wage. For high-school aged youth, it provides them work experience, a positive place to go and also creates a business in their commercial district.
So they brought together multiple partners to accomplish all this government, churches, funders, and they're really seeing the results, you know, in property values going up all the youth employed by this business graduated high school. You know, there's no doubt a long way to go, but this community really exemplifies that community driven, layered, holistic approach to place.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): And what had to come together in that community for all of those pieces joined together?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Well, they started with creating a long-term vision and a long-term plan, and they identified what needed to be part of that plan, what were the resources that needed to be there, who were the partners that needed to come to the table.
They built tremendous relationships with residents, and it has taken years, right? We're not talking about doing all of this in 12 to 18 months. This is, I believe it was a 10-year plan that they started working with, but it also was a really clear-eyed lens, I think, on what some of the challenges were, right?
We're talking about increasing numbers of folks without housing, increasing food security, focusing on safety and crime that was occurring in this community and bringing in the partners in the police department and criminal justice as well. So it was this really holistic approach. To bringing all of that together in one place.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): And it sounds like there was a, correct me if I'm wrong, a single organization pulling that all together, but also simultaneously building relationships with other organizations so that they all could come around the same table and share the same vision ultimately.
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Yeah, that's right. We know that one organization cannot accomplish all of this. It absolutely requires partners. And so there was a driving organization, the NeighborWorks organization in this community that was able to step up and say, we see the change that needs to happen and we are going to bring folks together around that change. But it absolutely required bringing all of those other folks to the table. And having that trust with residents so that they could be effective in the implementation of these strategies.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): Elizabeth, where is this taking place?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): This is all happening in Dover, Delaware, and Neighbor Good Partners is the NeighborWorks network organization that has been spearheading this work.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): And what might be some lessons that other communities could learn from this Delaware example?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): I think the thing that is most exciting about this example is the way they have layered such a variety of interventions in this community. Real estate development in the form of new housing, providing supportive services, creating business.
Workforce development and I think it's that kind of approach that we really need to focus on oftentimes communities or Organizations may see themselves as only being good at one thing or another and I think when we can start to open up our thinking Around hey, we're an affordable housing provider, but we can also create this small business to provide workforce development training for youth and be able to see the connections between those things, right, between how having opportunities for youth in the same place where you have an opportunity for homeownership in the same place where somebody who's struggling.
With food insecurity can get some support and assistance, how all of those things coming together is what's really knitting together the social fabric of a community, that civic infrastructure of a place and creating a much stronger and more resilient community over time.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): I think that community infrastructure idea is so important, and I think we've known this for a long time.
More recently, during the COVID 19 pandemic, I think it became glaringly obvious for people not in this business, right? Um, one of the things that also is really apparent to me that so many communities need development support, And battle some deep seated issues related to inequity. And so how does that play into the comprehensive community development approach?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): In this work, we need the recognition and the acknowledgement of the legacy of past efforts, including both positive and negative impacts resulting from those efforts. And then we need to move forward continuously. And I think what the CCD framework brings to this is the sort of radical transparency regarding purpose and intent, early and ongoing communication with residents and stakeholders to really build and sustain those strong relationships and that trust with community members.
One of the other things that we do really well at NeighborWorks is the cultivation of local resident leaders, right, to really put residents in the driver's seat, in the planning, the implementation, and the evaluation of CCD strategies, and so building that resident leadership and so building that resident leadership.
And that community infrastructure really allows the community to have ownership over what is happening in their own neighborhoods.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): Elizabeth, what you're saying is for comprehensive community development, people have to come together around a common cause and bring their individual contributions. Looking ahead into the future of comprehensive community development, what are some emerging trends or examples around the country that you can highlight for us where this is happening and change is happening?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): There are so many great
examples out there at Marietta. In Boston, in the Dorchester neighborhood, we have Codman Square Development Corporation.
They are doing wonderful work training resident leaders in advocacy efforts and they are actually winning policy change at the state level that is affecting housing in their community. In California, in the Mission District in San Francisco, we have the Mission Economic Development Agency. And they are actually putting residents in the driver's seat to determine how best to define, collect, and make sense of community change metrics.
And remember, low-income communities and communities of color are so often studied, right, with no agency provided to residents themselves. And so this group of residents was really able to design and create their own approach to what they wanted to know about themselves and they continued to guide that effort.
In the Mississippi Delta, we have Hope Enterprises working in Jackson, Mississippi, and really throughout the Delta, and they're partnering with really isolated, small, rural communities to develop strategic plans that are setting those communities up to move forward with important infrastructure and housing priorities and access.
The federal funding that is available to them. So there are really incredible things happening out there that emerge when we really start thinking differently about how it is that we can and want to have impact in places.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): The beauty of the examples that you provided is that they're diverse in location and in population, right?
So I wonder if, as people are listening to this, they think about comprehensive community development being an urban strategy. But the beauty of what you've just shared is it's happening in Dorchester, it's happening in San Francisco, but it's also happening in rural communities. How does the comprehensive community development model flex or adapt to different needs and trends that are happening across the country?
Because you know, no two communities are exactly the same.
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Exactly. And I think that's one of the really beautiful things about this approach to the work is that it is incredibly flexible to meet the unique context of individual communities, right? Because it's all about identifying what is special about this place. What do we want this place to become? Who are the people that are in this place? What are the businesses and assets, institutions, residents who make this community what it is? And how can we use that to continue to move our place forward to become the strongest it can be so it absolutely can be applied at any scale, really, no matter where you're working, what we ask folks to think about when they are defining their comprehensive community development outcomes is only.
Where can you, with residents and partners, achieve change with the resources that you can make available and in a timeframe that's meaningful to you?
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): So Elizabeth, you mentioned earlier some case studies that you're working on. Can you tell us about those, what we can expect to see in them and, and how we might learn from them?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): So what our case studies do is really give examples of comprehensive community development by showcasing the stories of 10 places across the U.S. that have used this approach to advance their work. So, they asked the question, what does a focus on place look like in practice? And the places are, as you've said, big, small, urban, rural, and what we see in them is how a common set of conditions is necessary for impactful place-based work and how they show up, even when the locations of that work and the strategies employed are vastly different. So these are really great, meaningful stories of people coming together and they cover such a wide range of strategies that I think everyone can kind of find something in and see their own community in.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): I know that the case studies highlight, you've talked about Codman Square working in Dorchester.
Tell us about Grow South Dakota, because that is a more rural example. Share what we learned and what's going on there. (Learn more at growsd.org)
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Yeah, so GROW has a really interesting approach to their work because, of course, their service area is statewide. Um, so what they have done is really centered the idea of growing resident leadership in places because they cannot be everywhere at the same time.
And so they will take the time to focus in on a community and really invest intensively in building resident leadership in that place. They also are leveraging our Community Leadership Institute. As a way to continue to grow those teams of resident leaders who are emerging and so they will take a team from that community to the Community Leadership Institute, they will provide the sort of wraparound supports and they will lift up those residents to become the folks driving the work in their community, which then allows grow South Dakota to kind of continue to spread the model and the work across the state.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): We’re doing some incredible work in South Dakota as in other places across the country. You mentioned one of the most exciting events that is beloved by me and many others, and that is the Community Leadership Institute. We offer it once a year. For those that may not be familiar with the Community Leadership Institute or how we fondly refer to it as the CLI, tell us what happens there.
Who attends? What's the format and, and why is it so unique?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): So the Community Leadership Institute is all about residents, right? So we invite our NeighborWorks network organizations to build teams that consist of residents from their communities and bring those teams. To a national conference where they can engage with people from all across the country.
They participate in several days of learning about community engagement. They share with each other, and then they build strategies while they're there that they bring home with them to their own communities. It's super unique in the fact that it is a conference for residents and also in that it brings incredible knowledge sharing and really lifts up what residents themselves are bringing to the table.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): Another thing that is a real hallmark of this particular event is we ask organizations nationwide. to nominate a leader who is really working across sectors to create change in their community. It, we name it in honor of our founder, Dorothy Mae Richardson, who, uh, created change in her Pittsburgh neighborhood more than 40 years ago. Still, it's the Dorothy Richardson [00:23:00] Awards for Resident Leadership.
And so I'll just give a plug to that because those awardees every year at the Community Leadership Institute are highlighted and their story is told and they're powerful stories of community change where someone never thought they could lead change in their community and they are. I want to, um, just share with folks, uh, we have a series of case studies as we mentioned.
Where can people find more about these case studies?
Elizabeth Druback Celaya (Director, Community Initiatives, NeighborWorks America): Well, we will be rolling them out over the next several weeks and months. You can find them on our website and social media. So we're excited to kind of get them out to the world over the next few weeks.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO, NeighborWorks America): Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us today.
You've given us a dynamic view of the power of comprehensive community development. As Elizabeth showed us, community development is about more than just bricks and mortar; it's about empowering people and creating opportunities. You can learn more about NeighborWorks programs and resources at our website, NeighborWorks.org.
Join us next time for more stories of hope and transformation. And remember, every small action counts in building stronger communities.
