Building Neighborhood Sustainability through Resident Participation, Starting with Resident Voice
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The Listening Communities Voice Equity Project is a Community-Based Participatory and Ethnographic Research Project that focuses on capturing the voices of residents in under represented ethnic-minority neighborhoods in Greenville, NC. Recognizing that resident input and involvement is key to informing local decision making and resource allocation, traditional institutionally-driven methods (ex. census and local community assessments), often fail to capture these voices. NC CIVIL, in partnership with East Carolina University’s Education Outreach & Scholarship Academy (EOSA) Research Team spent the fourth quarter months of 2021 canvassing these communities, hosting mini cookouts & small tent pop ups to engage directly with residents and capture their voices on quality of life and needs in our local racially and economically marginalized neighborhoods.
This research study is just the 1st part of NC CIVIL’s renewed aim to become more neighborhood focused, knowing that stronger neighborhoods make a stronger Greenville. This renewed vision for stronger neighborhoods includes a 3-part strategy for strengthening the social infrastructure in our most vulnerable racially and economically marginalized areas of Greenville (1st. strengthening the community voice and improving data collection in these under represented areas, 2nd. providing leadership development & training to neighborhood residents, and 3. providing organizing support and consulting to assist resident groups with long-term neighborhood planning).
“At the conclusion of this project, NC CIVIL will return to these same neighborhoods with all the input gathered and begin our “Neighborhood Organizing Initiative – set for summer 2022. Through the Neighborhood Organizing Initiative, NC CIVIL and various community partners will coordinate to offer 1 Year of Organizing and Capacity-Building Support in each of these neighborhoods. Support will include a range of nonprofit consulting and organizing services, including:
- a) coordinating outreach to engage residents in community planning,
- b) coordinating meetings to support community planning, goal setting and neighborhood-level project management,
- c) sponsoring flyer design & print and supplying volunteer teams to distribute flyers throughout the neighborhoods,
- d) assisting with facilitating meetings (to whatever degree appropriate),
- e) providing partnership development between neighborhood planning groups and local institutional leadership from various sectors, as appropriate to support the plans and goals of the neighborhood planning group.
NC CIVIL wants to publicly thank our local neighbors and partners at Vidant Health for their great support of this vision to address the social and more structural needs of our local neighborhoods. Partnerships are still the life blood of our work and we hope you will consider partnering with us too.
Jermaine McNair, Executive Director | mrjmcnair@nccivil.org | NC CIVIL 800 w 5th St. STE 5 Greenville, NC 27834