Our Community
OUR PEOPLE:
Our Communities for All Ages team is comprised of resident, church, school and non-profit leaders from the Highlandtown, Baltimore Highlands and Patterson Park neighborhoods. Our members are diverse in age, race/ethnicity and life experience. Some are life-long Baltimoreans and others transplants from cities as far away as Bogota, Colombia.
OUR STRENGTHS:
We have a collaborative team of community partners dedicating their time and effort to this work. Many of them already address community building and civic engagement among diverse groups, such as the Creative Alliance, Southeast CDC, Southeast Anchor Library, Banner Neighborhoods and Friends of Patterson Park. These organization offer hands-on, participatory programs and events that bring residents of all ages together to build relationships, learn about community development strategies and join volunteer and community service activities. There is increasing collaboration between these organizations and the local schools, including youth programming and access to the arts, the park, and other programs by the schools’ community of teachers, parents and students.
OUR CHALLENGES:
We're challenged to create spaces where everyone can be heard without feeling alienated, blamed, or misunderstood. Additionally, creating strong relationships takes time, so we will need to dedicate ourselves to this process over the long haul and hopefully plant seeds for relationship building as an organizing tool for the future.
OUR COMMUNTIES FOR ALL AGES:
In our conversations with neighborhood-based organizations and residents we found overwhelming support for protecting our neighborhoods’ greatest asset—people. There are a host of neighborhood organizations already protecting, supporting and celebrating the ethnic, age and income diversity in these neighborhoods.
We will work on understanding the interests and motivations of youth, adults and older adults while addressing cultural sensitivity and lack of feeling welcome by and between African American, Latino and white residents. We will build leadership opportunities for people of all ages but intentionally encourage youth to become the creators and leaders of community building projects. It is our hope that building relationships and creating resident leaders will holistically address the apathy, crime, grime and health issues also challenging residents.
The CFAA team believes relationship-building strategies that promote resident cohesiveness, build leadership skills and motivate youth to be part of the community building process will create a peaceful, socially and emotionally connected and economically prosperous community for people of all ages and backgrounds.
