NeighborWorks America has its foundation in resident leadership, the idea that those living and working in a community know best how to make their community stronger – and how to lead others in the effort. Each year, NeighborWorks honors some of those leaders with the Dorothy Richardson Award for Resident Leadership while also bringing attention to the work of resident leaders everywhere.

Kristina Aguilar's expertise was working on interior walls. DeJeaun Biggle liked the heavy lifting and tarring the foundation. But painting trim? "Tedious," he says. The neighbors worked together  to build their homes – and each other's – as a part of NeighborWorks Great Falls' Owner-Built Homes Program, which began in 2005  through USDA's Mutual Self-Help Program.

There's a growing divide between those who can access services digitally – like education, work and health care -- and those who can't. The issue is top-of-the-mind for housing practitioners, who often work with the very individuals that the divide is hurting the most. Some NeighborWorks network organizations are already working on solutions, such as setting up hotspots and working WiFi into their future projects. 

Erich Nakano, executive director of Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), says his journey to housing and community development began with three events. An activist whose parents sought to amplify stories about Japanese internment in the United States, Nakano says friends, family and fellow college students all shined lights on a path to working with the community he loved.

The 1970s

Creative placemaking, or placekeeping, is essentially a resiliency tool. Normally in discussions of placemaking or placekeeping, the stress or disturbance communities face have to do with economic factors, like displacement due to shifting development, or sometimes even environmental factors. In 2020, placekeeping projects designed by organizations in the NeighborWorks cohort faced an unanticipated outlier: the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Jamill Martinez, director of network organizing at Lawrence CommunityWorks, Inc., a NeighborWorks organization in Lawrence, Massachusetts, has spent her recent afternoons visiting bodegas. That's where many residents in her community who rent single rooms in homes or apartments go to eat hot meals of empanadas, sub sandwiches, plantains and more. So that's where Martinez and her coworkers have gone to talk about the dangers of scams.

The Tableau Fellows, a cohort chosen from among NeighborWorks America's network organizations, work to tell new stories about their nonprofits through the information they collect, with the help of mentors, using Tableau, which helps organi

Leslie Reid was born into a family of two: It was her and her mother, alone in New York, in need of better prospects. Reid spent time in foster care while her mother went to find them a home. Her family grew exponentially when she rejoined her mother, who had found work in Boston with a community of social workers. They'd started an organization for homeless youth, Reid says, and they lived together and worked together, providing shelter and services. 

For a learning cohort process supported by NeighborWorks America, community development organizations worked hand in hand with arts organizations as they re-imagined the future of their neighborhoods. What they found was often unexpected and revealed ways that the milestones found on the journey are just as important as the final destination.