Community Development

Doing Our Part Together: Coordinated Action that Transforms Lives
Community Partnerships. Community Solutions.

Our Current St. Louis Regional Coordinated Action

Bobby Bonner with Afterschool Labs and BM3 Technology is in conversation with the city about being a lead community developer, who will develop cutting-edge interactive technology centers for youth programming and adult education. In the process, he will help rehabilitate and update homes with green technologies that return energy credits to North St. Louis.
Community Allies has a partnership with Afterschool Labs to organize ethnodrama afterschool programs and teacher trainings for North St. Louis youth and teachers that upon approval will start at Sumner High School and spread to a number of other centers and schools.
The vision for these programs is for youth to use ethnodramatic research to capture community member desires for the development of these interactive technology centers and of North St. Louis.
Students will capture place-based oral histories of areas of North St. Louis, piecing together past and present collective action and innovation communities have been envisioning to overcome barriers and build and design their neighborhoods.
Students will work with a range of technologies to map the kind of development that provides for the best community-centered housing, educational, entrepreneurial and employment opportunities for NSTL residents.
Youth will present their research at working group meetings.
As North St. Louis residents share their desires for North St. Louis, companies and investors who want to support this effort will be needed to provide equipment, capital investment, and development support for the construction of centers, and sponsorships for youth programming and teacher trainings.

Help us share with St. Louis what you see as our region’s greatest issues – what needs to happen in different sectors for those challenges to be addressed. Help us understand what your sector is doing and what partnerships and resources are needed.

Podcast

Share what you know about the history of community-centered organizing in North St. Louis or your vision and desires for North St. Louis development and/or what your neighborhood or organization is currently working towards.

Share what you are doing in your industry or partnerships across sectors to support sustainable community-centered development (i.e. providing programs and mentorship that leads to industry training for youth, designing equitable community benefits agreements, establishing housing trust funds and embedding them in public schools, providing leadership mentorship and resources to St. Louis non-profits, providing backpacks, supplies, clothing, job training, transportation to communities, etc.).

Working Groups

Every North St. Louis neighborhood has an active community meeting that needs your input. Bobby, a community developer is attending these meetings and has placeholder plans for how to build interactive technology centers for youth and adults and for how to rehab housing in neighborhoods in the process. He needs your input on what you want him to do with his plans so he can be a better advocate with the city as he works to get plans approved.

Other Ways to Get Involved

If you are a North St. Louis community organization: Please bring us in to help us better understand your goals and needs and how our region (multiple sectors) could best support you.

If you are a business: Please bring us in to learn what you are doing/want to be doing to support North St. Louis organizations, neighborhoods, places of worship, and initiatives to better coordinate your efforts with regional efforts.

Be or connect us to sponsors: We need business communities to help provide the cutting-edge technologies North St. Louis youth and adults need to thrive. We need sponsors for programs and teacher trainings and capital investors for development. Please email us to learn more about the range of ways you can serve as a sponsor. [email protected]