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Terri’s PLACES Fellowship Kick-Off

Nexus encourages their staff to embark on professional development opportunities that deepen their learnings about the field of community building. For 2011-12, I was accepted into the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities Professionals Learning About Community, Equity and Smart Growth (PLACES) Fellowship program. The goal of the PLACES program is to strengthen grant maker capacity and help the philanthropic sector address inter-related issues of community and economic development, environmental sustainability, and regional planning using an explicit lens of social, economic, and racial equity; to help funders understand historic, current, and shifting inequities in the field of smart growth and apply systems change thinking/practices to this learning; and to create a community of practice among PLACES fellows, alumni and TFN members that will inspire leadership in their communities.

Our first of four gatherings was held on December 7-9th in Miami, Florida. The 2011-2012 co-hort of consists of 14 grant makers from around the country. The PLACES facilitators noted that three lenses would be used during all of the gatherings - the telescope (broad overview/landscape), microscope (what was happening on the ground) and mirror (exploring self-reflection).

On our first day in Miami, we learned about the local context for community development, growing disparity in affordability for low-income residents in Miami, and lack of philanthropic funding in the region, despite its immense wealth and large financial district. We were also joined by noted scholar john powell who gave us an overview of his current work on targeted strategies and implicit racial bias. This resulted in a rich conversation about what philanthropy could do to address systems change.

We also visited two key neighborhoods in Miami - Little Havana and Little Haiti where we learned about how those communities immigrated to Miami and the current struggles of both communities. In Little Havana, where the first Cubans immigrated, there is a thriving commercial district with several art galleries, restaurants and a theater run by the local community college. It is also a key tourist destination. However many Cubans no longer live here and it is now home to many other Central American immigrants. In meeting with local community partners, continued issues are the increase in substandard housing units that are causing several health problems and also the lack of physical space for communities to gather in. In Little Haiti, many Haitians continue to live in the neighborhood and work in the service sector in Miami. They have a beautiful community center built by the city of Miami but is rarely used by the community.

Another key focus of this first gathering was the importance of storytelling. In addition to learning about the Haitian community, we were joined by local journalists who discussed the rise of ethnic newspapers as means of disseminating information as well as the decrease in investigative journalism across the country as newsrooms have laid off hundreds of reporters. We also visited the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's office to learn about the trends in ethnic news and Hispanic voting.

Last but not least, as a professional development opportunity, self-reflection was another key component to this trip. PLACES fellows used the Myers-Briggs inventory to assess how they worked in teams and in decision making processes. This was a very informative experience and I look forward to reconvening in the spring in Seattle.

 

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