Neighborhoods@Work

PARTNERS IN HEALTH

Aren’t you tired of having others write about us like they have walked in our shoes and lived in our communities? Isn’t it frustrating to have policy makers make decisions that affect the well being of our community and we were never included in the discussion? Well, the Urban League understands your frustrations and we are responding! The Los Angeles Urban League’s Neighborhood@Works Health team is proud to announce that we have partnered with residents of Park Mesa Heights and some dynamic UCLA Researchers to launch its first Community-Partnered Participatory Research (CPPR) project, sponsored by The California Endowment.

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Los Angeles Urban League President Blair H. Taylor talks about the improvements around Crenshaw High School with the help of Neighborhoods@Work.  Pres. Taylor was part of an all star panel featured on MSNBC's Morning Joe featuring Rev. Al Sharpton, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and entertainer John Legend.  You can watch the full program after the jump.

Focus on education solutions for urban and at risk communities with host Joe Scarborough and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, among others.

Taylor is extremely active in urban educational issues and school reform and serves as the President of the Board of Directors for the Greater Crenshaw Educational Partnership (GCEP). He will highlight the League’s successes and continued progress in urban education reform through the efforts of Neighborhoods@Work, a five-year, holistic neighborhood change model in the Park Mesa Heights neighborhood of South LA surrounding and including Crenshaw High School.

Professor Steven Goldsmith of Harvard focuses a chapter on Neighborhoods@Work in his new book - The Power of Social Innovation: How Civic Entrepreneurs Ignite Community Networks for Good. Attached is an excerpt about the League by Professor Goldsmith.

League President & CEO Blair Taylor visited the KTLA Morning News for Black History Month. Blair discussed National Urban League's 100th Anniversary and the pending 2010 State of Black LA Report with Michaela Pereira, Mark Kriski, Sam Rubin, and Jessica Holmes. Talk also included Obama Administration's focus on supporting holistic neighborhood change models like League's Neighborhoods@Work and the hope that South LA is selected to receive the significant federal funding.

The report for Year 2 of the Los Angeles Urban League's Neighborhoods@Work initative is now available. From Chief Neighborhood Officer Pamela Bakewell:

The Neighborhoods@Work Report for Year Two includes an overview of our work from July 2008 through June 2009. We are proud to report our key accomplishments and key learnings to date, which demonstrate how we are “moving the needle”—the theme of this report. In Year One, we concentrated our efforts on infrastructure development; in Year Two, we implemented integrated activities and programs to achieve measurable impact in each of the five disciplines—Education, Employment, Health, Housing and Safety. In Year Two, we also moved further into the evaluation process of our model. We engaged experts who helped design intricate logic models for each discipline. We are excited to share a key learning of our work which indicated the need to develop a strategic approach to outreach. This resulted in the decision to add a sixth discipline in Year Three—Community Engagement and Outreach.