FutureHeights announces second round of community-building workshops

FutureHeights is proud to launch the second round of its Community-Building Workshop Series, a multidisciplinary neighborhood leadership development program designed for individuals enthusiastic about positively contributing to the community in which they live, work and play. Participants will develop leadership skills as well as gain knowledge and tools to help make their community strong, safe and vibrant.

Last spring, 14 residents from several neighborhoods, such as Noble, Forest Hill, Cain Park, Boulevard and Severance, completed the first series of workshops.

The program is funded by the City of Cleveland Heights through Community Development Block Grants and by individual contributions to FutureHeights.

“When you’re community-minded, you don’t just care about your area, you care about all of it, and the workshops helped connect our individual efforts to the entire community,” said Rhonda Davis-Lovejoy, a participant in the workshop series, and resident of the Cain Park neighborhood. “Through the workshops, we created relationships that will last forever; they’re probably worth a million dollars.”

The program takes an Assets Based Community Development approach, which means that it seeks to build on a neighborhood’s strengths. “We have several principles that guide the program,” said Mark Chupp, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and chair of the FutureHeights Civic Engagement Committee, which led the sessions. “We believe that institutions lead best by stepping back and supporting residents and voluntary groups, and that people have the power to do extraordinary things right where they live.”

The 2016 Community-Building Workshop Series will take place on Sunday afternoons, March 20, April 17, May 8 and June 19, 3–6 p.m. The location is still to be determined. Topics are: Organizing Your Neighborhood, Leveraging Community Resources, Gathering and Analyzing Neighborhood Data, and Formulating a Plan of Action. All Cleveland Heights residents are encouraged to apply to participate in the workshops.

The application deadline is 5 p.m. on March 16. The simple application can be found at www.futureheights.org. For information about the program, contact Sruti Basu at 216-320-1423 or sbasu@futureheights.org.

Sruti Basu

Sruti Basu is the director of community-building programs at FutureHeights.

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Volume 9, Issue 2, Posted 11:49 AM, 01.29.2016