Two neighborhood organizations are launching an ambitious new federally funded initiative to help social service organizations better coordinate services for children and families in Roxbury and Dorchester.
The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and Boston Promise Initiative have officially launched their Investments in Neighborhood Change Grants program, which will aid organizations providing services in the Dudley Street area with funding from the U.S. Department of Education.
“[Boston Promise Initiative] has been planning since January of 2013 but this will be our first time giving out grants to organizations that support our cradle-to-career pipeline strategy and provide support for young people,” Sheena Collier, director of the Boston Promise Initiative said.
Up to six seed grants will be disbursed by the Promise Initiative. Three of these grants are $25,000 for pilot/innovation strategies and three more are $75,000 for evidence-based/high impact strategies.
The seed money is aimed at creating a so-called “community of opportunity” in the Promise Neighborhood area, which is centered around Dudley Street.
Applicants will be considered and chosen based upon the potential impact of their proposed programs and their alignment with BPI’s investment priorities and indicators.
“We want to know that organizations are focusing on retaining the knowledge and skills within the community as well as making sure that what is being implemented will remain after the grants end,” said Collier. “Residents should know that what we’re doing is making an impact and not only addressing the current issues in the neighborhood but also determining which systems and policies need to change.
Inspired by Harlem’s Children’s Zone, BPI seeks to create better learning environments for children and youth growing up in Promise Neighborhoods, making sure they have access to great schools and strong systems of family and community support. The purpose of Promise Neighborhoods is to improve upon the educational and developmental outcomes of youth living in Boston’s most distressed communities, and to transform those communities by addressing four specific goals in mind.
The goals include: leveraging the strengths and assets already existing in the community, such as residents’ specific skills; retaining knowledge and building the skills and capacity of the community; committing to the use of data and evidence-based practices to address community needs and implementing strategies that lead to improvement and change, according to the DOE website.
Two of the few issues BPI will focus on in the neighborhood center around early childhood education and student mobility. With statistics showing that low third-grade reading levels indicate how students will do in the future, BPI will focus on strengthening literary skills for children early on. The program will also help children enrolled in schools in the neighborhood to remain there by securing permanent housing for families and working with Project Home to combat housing instability.
Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, the leading agency for the Promise Initiative, has been working to help build a community of opportunity with BPI in the Dudley Village Campus, or DVC. The DVC includes Dudley Street, Upham’s Corner, Grove Hall, Blue Hill Avenue and Fairmount corridors. As one of 12 organizations awarded Promise Implementation Grants by the DOE since 2010, DSNI will receive nearly $6 million in federal funding through 2018. In the planning and creation of the Boston Promise Initiative, DSNI has helped bring together and been aided by dozens of community and institutional partners.
“We’re transforming the neighborhood into a place where every child has access to opportunities and quality resources. Currently only 30 percent of kids in the neighborhood go to school in our community and we want to give the Dudley Village Campus an actual campus feel, where constant learning is taking place and families are receiving support from the community,” said Collier. “We’re making sure our children are healthy which will equate to a healthy community.
