Welcome to the December issue of Provplan’s e-newsletter. We started this newsletter a year ago and since then we have received very positive feedback. We feel good about staying in touch with all of you on a regular basis. The community health story in this issue ends with a wonderful paraphrase of a quote from Margaret Mead, “What made this country great was not the ‘pioneer hero’ but groups of regular folks with a common vision working together to improve the quality of life for all people in their community.” With those wise words, all of us at The Providence Plan wish you a safe, healthy and happy holiday season.

Thanks,
Pat McGuigan, Executive Director
pmcguigan@provplan.org

YouthBuild to get a new home with the restoration of a neglected treasure 
With the renovation of a long-neglected building in Olneyville, YouthBuild Providence, a program of The Providence Plan, is moving closer to its dream of a larger, more permanent home.

YouthBuild and the Olneyville Housing Corporation (OHC) are transforming the Polish National Home – a historically and architecturally significant building with 9,000 square feet of interior space – into a vibrant community asset. OHC will occupy the first level and YouthBuild the second – more than doubling YouthBuild’s current living quarters a block away from the Chaffee Street building.

YouthBuild Director Andrew Cortes says the additional space will allow his program to increase the quality of its services and also the number of students it can accept. He’s hopeful the space will be ready for occupancy before the next class cycle in September 2007. The long-term lease YouthBuild will sign with OHC locks in costs comparable to what the organization is now paying for its much smaller home on Delaine Street.

For OHC, this location provides relief from the overcrowded three-bedroom apartment that currently houses its administrative offices. The new building will allow for some shared space for the two organizations – such as conference rooms and computer labs – and will also provide space for the many community activities in which both groups are involved.

“This renovation is a fantastic opportunity to take a community asset and return it as a vibrant, contributing part of the neighborhood,” says Frank Shea, executive director of OHC. [more on New Home...]

ProvPlan expands its reach in the health community
Across the state, community-based coalitions increasingly rely on Providence Plan’s data and technical assistance to tackle local health concerns. In providing this support, ProvPlan has developed or expanded valuable partnerships with other agencies and institutions, such as the Brown Medical School, area hospitals and the R.I. Department of Health (RIDOH).

Through the Data Utilization Initiative, funded with a grant from RIDOH’s Division of Family Health, ProvPlan supplies not only neighborhood-level data and maps, but also technical assistance in the interpretation and use of this information through stages of analysis, strategic planning, implementation and evaluation.

The coalitions ProvPlan has worked with include: The Pawtucket and Central Fall Coalition for Early Childhood and Family Support; the Newport County Healthy Communities Initiative; The Northern Partners Coalition; the Mount Hope Empowerment Network; and the Southside Minority Health Coalition.

Most of these organizations have received Community Access to Child Health (CATCH) grants and have selected specific issues they want to address. The Pawtucket and Central Falls Coalition, for example, is identifying the barriers to health care for children and families living in those cities and then developing recommendations for eliminating them. To provide technical assistance in this effort, ProvPlan has entered into a new partnership with the Area Health Education Center Program at Brown University. It also gained new access to emergency room data from the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island.

ProvPlan helped The Northern Partners Coalition, a group of organizations working to improve the health of Woonsocket families, apply for a $10,000 CATCH grant from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The coalition will use those funds to improve adolescent wellness by identifying barriers to health care and providing resources to providers to ensure that the city’s teenagers remain connected to a medical home. [more on Health...]

Partner Profile
The Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence is a New Roots partner that sits on the New Roots advisory board. It is also one of the seven organizations participating in New Roots’ Communities Empowering Youth initiative.

Building a ‘Beloved Community’
The May 2000 death of Jennifer Rivera, a 15-year-old girl gunned down the day before she was to testify against a man accused of murder, galvanized members of Providence’s Southside community. Having already buried other young victims earlier that year, they knew something had to happen internally if they were to build a “beloved community.”

That year – a particularly violent one in Providence – residents and members of St. Michael’s Church formed the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, embracing the principles of Martin Luther King Jr. to reduce the violence that was killing their children. Armed with those six principles, the Institute set out to create a culture that resolves potentially violent situations with nonviolent solutions.

The Institute, which rents space at St. Michael’s Church on Oxford Street, hired Teny Gross as its executive director in 2001. The nonprofit organization now employs 13 full-time street workers and some 40 nonviolence trainers who are paid by the hour for the training they provide. It operates seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

“Just last week several of our street workers stood on the street outside a party that was reportedly attracting some rival gang members,” Teny notes. “They stayed until the party ended and then they followed some of the kids just to make sure they got home safely.” [more on Institute for Nonviolence...]



New Roots Announcements
January Training
New Roots Providence will hold free training in January, open to all faith- and community-based organizations working in Providence. This training, “Communicating for Change,” will be a hands-on workshop where you’ll learn the elements of strategic communications and media plans. The workshop leader is Karen Jeffreys, who for many years served as director of communications for the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence. To learn more New Roots’ free training series and to register for this workshop, please visit www.newrootsprovidence.org, where you can
choose to register for Wednesday, Jan. 17, or Saturday, Jan. 20.

Small Grants
With New Roots Providence’s Small Grants Program, up to $6000 is available to faith- and community-based organizations working in Providence. Funds support capacity-building – those activities that make organizations and their programs stronger.

To be eligible, organizations must have – or plan to have – programs in one of the following areas:
- People re-entering the community from prison;
- Children of prisoners;
- People moving from welfare to work;
- Preventing youth involvement in violence or gang activity.

Interested organizations must act soon to complete the simple application, as the application deadline is quickly approaching. Applications are due December 31, 2006.

To learn more about the grant and download the application, please visit www.newrootsprovidence.org

Leadership Think Tanks for Executive Directors
New Roots Providence is inviting leaders of faith and community organizations in Providence to participate in one of our Think Tanks which will begin in January and February of 2007.

Leadership Think Tanks are small groups of executive leaders, led by an experienced facilitator. Think Tanks follow a peer learning model which supports each member’s learning and provides quick feedback that can be applied to professional, personal, or organizational life. Through the Think Tanks, you’ll learn more about a topic, implement what you’ve learned, then return to discuss the challenges and rewards. One of the greatest benefits is the opportunity to be with people who share similar experiences – fellow executive leaders.

Think Tank topics will cover a range of programmatic and organizational development topics, including fund development, boards and governance, and leadership issues. For Think Tank descriptions, please visit www.newrootsprovidence.org




New Home, cont.
Though vacant for many years, the Polish National Home, which was built in the 1920s, has retained some lovely architectural features, such as moldings, tin ceilings and murals painted by Polish artists who once lived in the neighborhood. The large lot surrounding the building offers space for the possible construction of vocational buildings in the future.

Many different friends of OHC and YouthBuild have stepped forward to make this project possible. Renovations will be funded by Struever Bros. Eccles and Rouse ($300,000); the R.I. Housing Resources Commission’s Building Better Communities Fund ($150,000); Providence City Councilwoman Josephine DiRuzzo’s bond allocation ($100,000); the Laborers’ International Union ($15,000); and a grant from the City of Providence ($140,000). Gilbane Inc. has provided valuable cost estimating services, and a loan from the City’s Economic Development Partnership will be used to pay acquisition costs for the building. Additional contributions are still being sought to lower the ongoing carrying costs for the two organizations.

Since 1988 OHC has been working to stabilize the Olneyville neighborhood by addressing the problems associated with an aging housing stock, decline in owner occupancy, and the increasing gap between housing costs and resident income. YouthBuild is a 10-month alternative education and workforce development program that helps out-of-school youth gain the academic, job readiness and occupational skills needed to make a successful transition into the workforce. [top]

Health, cont.
The Southside Minority Health Coalition (in South Providence) and the Newport coalition both won grants through RIDOH’s Initiative for Healthy Weight. They are assessing community needs and developing intervention plans to promote healthy eating and active living within their communities. ProvPlan’s maps help these groups locate, for example, physical activity opportunities – such as bike paths and parks – or grocery stores.

Newport’s relationship with ProvPlan and RIDOH led to its acceptance into an institute run by the University of Nebraska Medical School, a series of workshops that takes participants from data to action. Newport was one of just seven cities in the country chosen for this nationally recognized institute.

“Because we have such access to data from so many different sources, we are able to give groups a full picture of health conditions in their communities,” explains Amy Pettine, urban information specialist at ProvPlan. “We can bring data down to the local level and make it relevant. We’ve found that communities are eager to learn more about how to use data to inform their work. One of our future goals is to provide more formal training and to bring organizations together to build this capacity.”

“When people start to see themselves as solutions rather than problems to be fixed by strangers, good things can happen,” notes Peter Simon, deputy medical director of RIDOH’s Department of Family Health. “To paraphrase Margaret Mead, what made this country great was not the ‘pioneer hero’ but groups of regular folks with a common vision working together to improve the quality of life for all people in their community.” [top]

Institute for Nonviolence, cont.
Unlike the trainers, the street workers operate exclusively in Providence. They know the streets well – and the youth who inhabit them. They help mediate disputes and serve as mentors in public spaces, the courts and the schools, including the R.I. Training School. Some specialize in specific kinds of work, such as gangs or schools, but all are grounded in King’s principles of nonviolence.

“When we teach nonviolence, we really are teaching a philosophy– a way of approaching life and looking at the world,” says Teny. “And we give youth some very practical tools for dealing with violent situations.”

The Institute’s nonviolence trainers, who together provide thousands of hours of training each year, bring these skills to students, teachers and parents in Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Lincoln and the Training School. Training begins as early as 3rd grade.

While the Institute’s first priority is to keep young people alive, its second is to help them thrive. Among some of the issues Teny and the Institute feel strongly about is the importance of summer jobs, not just to keep idle youth busy but also to increase their sense of self-worth. The “Beloved Community” Summer Jobs Program places young people at local nonprofits and small businesses for 20 hours a week, and involves them in a nonviolence training program.

The Institute is now raising funds to renovate the old convent across the street from its current home. Once renovated, this building will house its offices, training rooms and youth activity space.

While Teny acknowledges that the needs are serious in Providence – a city that ranks third in the country for child poverty – he is impressed by the can-do spirit he finds in the community. “And,” he adds, “ I love that a small nonprofit like ours can make a big difference.” For more information, visit the Institute's website: www.nonviolenceinstitute.org
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