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CBCE is currently engaged with three communities (“Engagement Communities”). We are the Practitioner in two communities where we are offering the training and coaching ourselves. In the other Engagement Community, we are the Facilitator training a key community member to be the Practitioner for her community. These are our current Engagement Communities.
Current Efforts
Ending Homelessness is Possible
West Side Neighborhood
in Corpus Christi, TX
The West Side Neighborhood is a neighborhood of approximately 20,000 households on the west side of Corpus Christi. To work effectively with this very large neighborhood, CBCE is engaging with one quadrant at at time, each with approximately 5,000 households.
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The status of the current Engagement Neighborhood quadrant is “Re-emerging” from the pandemic.
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The one full block which the neighborhood Listening Team completed before COVID is referred to by its co-captains as “totally transformed.” The neighbors are closely connected. They know each other, look out for each other, and take care of each other.
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The Listening Project for this block (before COVID) included a survey of every neighbor on the block, after which the Listening Team shared the survey results at a block party in the park at the end of their block.
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The block club co-captains organize three or four block events per year.
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The pattern and themes of hopes, dreams, and concerns identified by the survey included: community coherence, safety, reduction of drugs and crime, and beautification. As more blocks are surveyed a critical mass of neighbors will be identified who share common dreams and concerns, and will form Action Teams to work on the things that matter to them.
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As Action Teams form, CBCE will offer coaching and training on team leadership and on team formation.
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As more teams form, the team leaders will form their own core group, which can develop a steering team, or a neighborhood association that sustains the activities and wellbeing of the community.
Homeless Helping Homeless In Community
in Corpus Christi, TX
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The status of the Homeless Helping Homeless Community is “Maintaining.”
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This community has always been available to engage, even during the pandemic, and actually thrived during that time. They lived in tents in a park, held regular weekly meetings, and made decisions about how to live “off the grid” with no power or water. When armed drug dealers took over the park, they. Some were able to get into affordable housing, but many went back to the streets. Only a dozen or less members of the HHH community are gathering to form a healthy community that is based on their core values of safe, supportive, positive, and honest. The rest of the Homeless Helping Homeless community has returned to a the street culture, which is “every man and woman for themselves.” This dysfunctioinal has recently scattered and splintered due to the aggressive action of the City of Corpus Christi to prevent “loitering” or “camping” in public.
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The principles of Asset Based Community Development have proved limited for working with an Engagement Community in which most of the members are not housed, not able to even keep their community together while being forced to keep moving from place to place, and are dysregulated from their root issues with unresolved trauma.
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The dozen members of the HHH community who are committed to forming a healthy community call themselves the Peer Advocates. The meet regularly to build healthy relationships with each other, and to build a relationships of mutual respect with the larger Corpus Christi community.
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There have been no stable longterm leaders of the Peer Advocates. Shared leadership, however, works well for their situation.
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As long as the Peer Advocates continue to meet and work on their goals, CBCE will continue coaching, training, and supporting them.
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As the direct work with the HHH community is in the process of deactivating, the final product and the next step for the HHH community is being organized. The final product is a Listening/Discovery Project report designed to give the homeless community a voice at the table where decisions are being made. The report began as a script, written by the making practitioner, Bruce Wilson, who has been befriending and listening to the HHH members for two and a half years. The script is being reviewed and edited by the HHH community. Then it is being used to create a video series where the report is shared by Bruce Wilson and discussed by the HHH community themselves.
Costa Tarragona Apartment Home Community
in Corpus Christi, TX
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The status of this community is “Emerging.”
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CBCE is collaboratively training the Practitioner of this community, a one-time member of the community who now serves as the Activities Director.
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The Practitioner is still forming her Listening Team to survey the community, one person, one building at a time. Each building has approximately the same number of residents as a neighborhood block.
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The Practitioner has already begun the Listening Project with one other member of the community. They will invite other members of the community to join them on the Listening Team as they discover the passions, hopes, dreams, gifts, and strengths of the residents.
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They are discovering that most of the residents do not think of themselves as a community, but have discovered through their current (in-progress) survey of one building that the residents are delighted to learn about each other.
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As the Listening Project reveals the hopes, dreams, gifts, and strengths of the residents, a critical mass of residents will be identified in each area and will form Action Teams to work on the things that matter to them.
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As Action Teams form, CBCE will offer coaching and training on team leadership and on team formation.
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As more teams form, the team leaders will form their own core group, which can form into a steering team, or a neighborhood association.
