The Westgate Project is an OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM.
After establishing our partnership presence throughout the Pitt-Greenville area, the Westgate Project is our effort to anchor that presence in our under served West Greenville Community. This platform is designed to connect with and serve community residents through outreach, mentoring, and support services. We commit extra efforts to offering this platform to and developing this platform with our various partners for a shared model of community service.
Outreach
The Westgate Agreement – criminal diversion & mentoring initiative. This is a partnership tool for outreach based on a memorandum of understanding between NC CIVIL & The Greenville Police Department. The agreement states that any arrests made by Greenville Police Officers serving in the West Zone (to the extent allowed by law) will be reported to NC CIVIL so that we can organize outreach, establish contact, and build a relationship with the individual arrested to coordinate comprehensive services for the individual, the family, and the environment of issue.
The Westgate Street Team – our primary vehicle of service for young adults and peer outreach. Young adults are placed on the street team and led on biweekly service missions into the community on blitz marketing canvassing missions to distribute information and materials promoting programs, projects, and events on behalf of our various nonprofit partners also serving the area.
Workforce Development
The NC CIVIL & Vidant “Community Employment Pipeline” – In 2017 NC CIVIL was selected to join Vidant Health as an official community charter and together participate in a national effort called “Pursuing Equity”, led by the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI). As part of this Pursuing Equity Initiative and Vidant Health’s overall re-commitment to our community, they have joined on as an official sponsor of the Westgate Project, contributing dollars, staff volunteerism, and a redesigned employment application process that greatly increases our community’s access to resources and careers with Vidant Medical Center.
Service Year Accelerator – In 2017 NC CIVIL joined United Way of Pitt County and East Carolina University’s Center for Leadership & Civic Engagement to represent Pitt County in a statewide initiative called “Service Year North Carolina”, led by the Institute of Emerging Issues (IEI) with a mission to increase the number of AmeriCorps service positions serving in North Carolina and share best practices among participating agencies across the state. Because of its ability to meet critical needs in the community while helping to increase the capacity of other local agencies, NC CIVIL’s Westgate Project place-based service model was selected as the operating model that our Pitt County charter would submit for grant consideration and acceptance into the state cohort. Pitt County’s application was accepted and Greenville was designated as an official “Service Year North Carolina Community”. In June of 2018, NC CIVIL is set to receive its first grant installation of Service Year positions that will allow us to activate 5 AmeriCorps VISTAS in the West Greenville Community.
West Greenville POP UP – This is the first installment of our “Creative Use of Community Spaces” concept. Our belief is that a healthy community is one where every resident can continually increase their ability to contribute. Our goal is to build spaces in the community where individual contribution to the group is possible and supported with resources. On one Saturday each month from July to November 2017, we transformed the NC CIVIL parking lot into an outdoor vendors market and community resource fair. Many nonprofit resource providers, vendors, and community members participate to create a shared experience of information, ideas, products, services, art and fun, celebrating the values in our community.
Walkable West Greenville – NC CIVIL’s outreach efforts in 2017 were aimed at creating a consistent and visible presence of local leaders and outreach efforts in our community. Through outreach and engagement, we wanted to promote resources and learn about the issues and values in our community. Director, J McNair currently donates his workday lunches to walking meetings in the community on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays 12p-2p. The Westgate Street Team also conducts Saturday Outreach Canvassing Missions in the community. In the past year we’ve learned of other walking efforts and see an opportunity to create synergy among these efforts. The West Greenville Health Council was established in conjunction with Walkwise NC and Pitt Partners for Health and have organized group walks in West Greenville on Mondays. Uptown Greenville is working with NC CIVIL to launch their “Walk Your City” Campaign between the Uptown district and West Greenville. This campaign will feature city approved signs posted around the community at common landmarks and will display the walking distance to another common landmark. United Way, in Conjunction with Go Science, have developed a concept for using Saturday walks to get residents to our community gardens for book readings and kid friendly activities that promote early literacy and United Way’s “First Books” program.