900 join in the fun at 'Getting It Done'

• Patrick Barry
• April 3, 2008

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They came from 24 Chicago neighborhoods and 56 cities for a whirlwind of workshops, tours, hallway skull sessions and even dancing. It was LISC/Chicago’s first national conference for community development practitioners, and by the looks on people’s faces, it was a heck of a good time.

Called “Getting It Done: New Tools for Communities,” the conference drew an overflow crowd of 900 movers, shakers and “community heroes” to the UIC Forum at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Hosting it all were the 14 lead agencies of the New Communities Program (NCP), and they outdid themselves with elaborate table displays, enthusiastic spokespeople and deeply knowledgeable presentations across 17 hours of action on March 26 and 27.

“We are meeting at a moment in history that is full of promise,” said keynote speaker Jonathan Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation, which has committed $50 million to the 10-year NCP effort. “I think we are on the cusp of another era of domestic reform . . . and we know that energy must come from the neighborhoods and not from Washington , and that community development organizations are the critical drivers of change.”

The conference focused on “new” tools to make change happen, but NCP director Susana Vasquez pointed out that the “strong hammer” of organizing was pioneered long ago by Saul Alinsky, and that some Chicago organizations have been in the game for 40 years. “What is new,” she said, “is that after 11 years of learning while doing, we are able to host this conference. There are no outside experts here. Every panel, every workshop and every tour is led by Chicago’s very own cutting-edge leaders in comprehensive development, who are eager to share this approach because it is working.”

View hundreds of photos on LISC/Chicago's Flickr page.  

Laughing while learning

When attendees packed into eight workshops on the first afternoon, what they found was purposefully entertaining, from a neighborhood girl’s lovely demonstration of violin playing to a football-passing exercise that was turned into an opportunity for live blogging.

In the engagement workshop, participants paired off for one-on-one interviews, then were recruited to role-play a tense community meeting after a child was shot. Portraying a grieving mother, pompous alderman and jaded police commander, the actors elicited gales of laughter, but then the group settled into serious discussion of how to make such meetings work.

Developer Adam Troy of Mahogany Ventures told participants in the deal making workshop how a scrappy new organization, the Quad Communities Development Corporation, landed an $80 million housing and retail development. “They didn’t have an appointment. They bum-rushed us, and they did it successfully. What got them in the door is that they were deal-ready. They came in with the information (and market data we needed).”

T

he peer learning would continue the next day with three breakfast sessions, five bus tours and 12 roundtables, but Wednesday night was reserved for fun. First came hors d’oeuvres and drinks as Aldermen Ed Burke (14th) and Willie Cochran (20th) honored 43 “community heroes” with awards that Cochran likened to “a kiss on the cheek, a pair of cufflinks (and) a bouquet of flowers.” Each hero or group received $500 to spend on a community project of their choosing.

Nearly 200 participants then boarded buses for “neighborhood nightlife,” including a Garfield Park Conservatory tour, music at the Grand Ballroom in Woodlawn and a Puerto Rican dinner and salsa lessons at the Humboldt Park Boathouse. One group tearing up the dance floor was from Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in New York City , and they stuck around on Friday to take a tour of Auburn Gresham.

The NCP approach

Underlying the conference was a shift that began 11 years ago when Chicago community development leaders organized a self-reflection series called the Futures Forum. Three large non-profits had recently folded and the old bricks-and-mortar approach didn’t seem adequate to address urban ills. The forum recommendation was to “go comprehensive” – working across a broad front from health care and safety to schools and youth programming – which ultimately led to the New Communities Program.

Other LISC offices adopting the same method sent more than 250 representatives from 20 cities. At a breakfast session for LISC staffers, Jim Capraro of Greater Southwest Development Corporation explained the critical role of community-level intermediaries, called lead agencies. “Being a neighborhood lead agency does not mean that you are leading the race and everyone else is losing,” he said. “It’s like being an orchestra conductor; you have to have willing musicians (community partners) to play the music.”

For all the laughter and good feelings, the sessions covered tough topics, too, from the “black/brown challenge” of building relationships in mixed Latino/African-American neighborhoods to the hardball tactics that community leaders must master to take on the power structure.

Rubbing shoulders with other practitioners produced “a lot of energy” for Armeather Gibbs, CEO of United Way of Rhode Island . “You want to go home and do a million things,” she said.

And for workshop presenter Shirley Reyes, the conference provided another step in her own development as a leader. "In the beginning, I was just a housewife lady, (and) I started to get depressed,” recounted Reyes, who became a parent mentor at her local school and now is a parent-mentor coordinator for the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. "Before I did this, I couldn't talk up here like this. Now I'm nervous, but actually I can talk. (This program) changed my life."

Contributors to this report were Maureen Kelleher, Elizabeth Duffrin, Richard Muhammad and Ed Finkel.

For more details about the conference, please click here . 

 

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