Striving for more than improving financial conditions for families in the six Atlanta neighborhoods which comprise Neighborhood Planning Unit V or NPU-V, The Center for Working Families, Inc. (TCWFI) incorporates a Community Building Program (CBP) into its efforts. TCWFI seeks to nurture resident leadership and increase residents’ capacity to act as primary change agents, and, consequently, the primary beneficiaries of community transformation. By integrating these two strategies under one roof, TCWFI is targeting the “sweet spot” of public life – the space in which efforts build community and solve public challenges at the same time.

The Community Building Program at TCWFI achieves this “sweet spot” in two ways:

• CBP increases opportunities to develop leadership. These leadership skills mature with concrete projects that coincide with CWF’s workforce development and asset building efforts. Employment and entrepreneurship possibilities for residents increase with this kind of nexus.
• One of TCWFI’s core beliefs is that children thrive when their families do well and families prosper in strong communities. To impact the quality of life for children and families living in NPU-V, TCWFI invests in the fabric of the community while helping parents and other adults build the skills to succeed economically.

Over the course of the neighborhoods’ histories, there have been a number of people, agencies and organizations that have come to the community, made promises and left – with many promises unfulfilled. TCWFI recognized early on the importance of having a physical presence in the community in order to sustain the dialogue and build a sense of trust with residents. Being collocated with The Center for Working Families, Inc. at the Dunbar Neighborhood Center, CBP is directly linked with a network of civic organizations and service provider organizations with close relationships with residents.