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What makes Holistic Neighborhood Development unique?
Place-Based
One of the greatest indicators of one’s life-long economic mobility is the neighborhood in which one lives. HND asserts that place is the most important factor to consider when seeking long-term outcomes, and it is one of the most neglected lenses within traditional poverty alleviation tactics. Place allows us to go deep, work broadly, and invest in the long-haul for real results.
Proximity
We cannot solve anything from a distance. We have to draw near, enter into relationship, and open ourselves up to the possibility of mutual transformation. Transactional giving between strangers will never end poverty. You cannot serve someone out of poverty. HND leads with neighboring and relationship.
Integrative
Poverty is neither caused, sustained, or solved by any one thing; it is the dynamic intersection of multiple factors, systems, and circumstances. The “holistic” dimension of HND is about committing to comprehensive engagement that seeks innovative, integrative strategies for long-term outcomes.
Agile
Cities, people, opinions, policies, and economies can all change in the blink of an eye. Strategies that worked last year might night work in the next. Work done for months may come up empty and expectations may get upended at a moment’s notice. HND can create real change because it is flexible and adaptive, constantly committed to the best, healthiest approach, even if that means a radical course correction mid-stream. We do not seek the perpetuation of our program; it is always about the thriving of a community and whatever it takes to make that happen.
Impact-Oriented
Results matter. Not activity, not busyness, not arbitrary program numbers, but impact. They may be hard to come by, hard to define, or hard to measure, but they are core to what it means to commit to HND. We want to see lives and communities thriving, not dependent on external support year after year. We do not settle for less than true and lasting change.
Data-Driven
Flourishing communities is not just a big vision for us. It is a process we have developed with tools to track and measure the health of a place. This process will define and create the strategies that will lead to long-term, lasting change in your neighborhood.
A Local Food Oasis
A disproportionate percentage of food deserts are majority Black and brown neighborhoods. One of the things we have found is that, ironically, large, chain grocery stores with their expansive parking lots do more to perpetuate food deserts than to solve them. So what do we do? How can we create right-size grocery stores in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty where they are most needed?
We are excited to share with you a conversation with one of the key partners that has made Carver Market possible, Jimmy Wright. Jimmy runs a local grocery store in Opelika, AL called Wrights Market which is doing the same kind of innovative and restorative work in his neighborhood.
How it *Should Work (Neighborhood Hackonomics)
How do we bring about economic vitality in places designed to not experience it? Well, to be honest, most of the time we have to find hacks to make a way out of no way. Whether it is breaking up a food desert, launching a cafe, or setting up a hub for entrepreneurs and small business owners, we are often creating innovative hacks that work against what is, for the sake of what it should be.
How it *Doesn’t Work
FCS has a mantra on the walls of our office – “We can do hard things.” This is there because just about everything we do is profoundly difficult. And it is challenging because the systems and structure were built to create the conditions we are trying to reverse. In our previous episode, we made the case of doing economic development at the scale of the neighborhood – being of, with, and for the neighborhood. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how it does work, we felt it honest and important to start with how it *doesn’t work. There are sizeable barriers that you will face if you choose to join us on the path of holistic neighborhood development.