The Neighborhood Partners Initiative

The mission of Compass Communications is to help build communities through communications. It is an ambitious goal, requiring an ambitious standard of practice: that the work of Compass be collaborative, compelling, and comprehensive. That’s the principle behind all our efforts. Here’s one example of how it looks in practice.

In the late 1990s, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation launched the Neighborhood Partners Initiative, a seven-year community-building program in New York City. Its aim was to produce concrete, measurable improvements in vulnerable communities at five sites within Harlem and the South Bronx. Its strategy was to cultivate the strengths of local residents and institutions, and to support and develop their capacity to effect change.

Compass Communications’ president, Kitty Barnes, was brought into NPI to develop a communications strategy for the project. Her first step was to meet with all constituent NPI groups: foundation staff, representatives from five community-based organizations that played a leading role in the project, and community residents from the five participating project sites.

All the meetings were instructive, but the community meetings were revelatory. Residents at all five sites expressed great distress over various communications failures in their neighborhoods, especially: the failure of neighbors to meet with one another regularly; the failure of government, corporate, and nonprofit agencies to convey information, consult with community residents, or respond to community requests; the failure of residents to speak out effectively on issues affecting their lives and the life of their community; the failure of mainstream media to report on local issues or to depict local residents fairly. These community members understood communications to be vitally essential tool for community building—and a tool that was not available to them.

That understanding, along with information gathered from meetings with all the other constituent groups in the project, informed the comprehensive communications strategy Compass designed for NPI. The strategy incorporated three key principles:

• all participants in the initiative, including community residents, should actively engage in its strategic communications plan
• the communications plan should integrate the efforts of all participants, within a framework that corresponds with, and helps to advance, the overarching goals of the initiative
• communications should not only support community-building efforts, it should help to lead those efforts.

Working on those principles, and in collaboration with all NPI stakeholders, Compass developed the following communications plan.

For the five community-based organizations participating in the initiative, Compass developed materials documenting their participation in the project, including a series of print publications and a documentary video. Compass also produced public relations and fundraising materials for participating agencies to help broaden support for their work. Some examples:

Community Matters
Five NPI agency profiles in print
I Can See Clearly Now
Six NPI videotapes: for the entire initiative and for individual agencies
Community Building Through Community Service
Annual report for Mid-Bronx Citizens Council
I Love to Tell the Story
Viewbook for Abyssinian Development Corporation

Working with community residents at all five participating sites, Compass developed programs to teach communications skills; create community-run communications vehicles, including newspapers and video production projects; and help residents to become more effective community builders as well as active participants in the communications strategy of the initiative.
Some examples:

The Phoenix
Newsletter produced by community residents of Central Harlem
Highbridge Horizon
Community-run community newspaper—continues to lead many successful campaigns for neighborhood improvement, from education reform to street repair
Collective Inspiration
A neighborhood history in text and photos, produced in the form of a journal a traveling exhibition
It’s No Joke
One of a series of videotaped public service announcements produced by neighborhood residents to encourage greater participation in community life

In order for the foundation to inform the field about the initiative, Compass helped to develop a final documentation program in which all constituents in the project took part—foundation staff, technical assistance providers, staff members of participating community-based organizations, and community residents.
Some examples:

The Power to Change
A national conference about the initiative, held in June 2003, developed by and featuring presentations by foundation staff, technical assistance providers to the project, staff members of community-based organizations, and community residents. Accompanying materials included:
Field Notes, a series of informational publications on issues addressed in the initiative, written by community members and staff in participating sites
NPI: It’s a Wrap, a documentary video created by community residents and highlighting speeches and workshops from the conference

Neighborhood Partners Initiative: A Model for Community Change
A publication describing the NPI program, including the theory behind its development and the activities that accompanied its implementation, featuring case studies written and edited by community residents

Issues of Power in Changing Communities
A written and oral presentation concerning one of the key issues in the Neighborhood Partners initiative, developed in collaboration with community residents and staff members of the foundation and participating agencies

Technical Assistance: Getting and Using the Right Tools for Community Building
A written and oral presentation illustrating best practices for effective use of technical assistance, developed in collaboration with community residents and staff members of the foundation and participating agencies

Social Capital and Civic Engagement
A written and oral presentation examining the role of social capital in community-building efforts, developed in collaboration with community residents and staff members of the foundation and participating agencies

By engaging all program participants in its development and implementation, the communications strategy for this initiative became more than simply documentation of the program; it became an active agent in the program, promoting, even leading, the efforts to achieve the program’s goals. Several of the community-run communications projects developed during the Neighborhood Partners Initiative, including two community newspapers and a video production program, will be continuing after NPI has ended. So the community-building work that the NPI was created to promote will be sustained into the future by the communications work of the community residents themselves.