There is a difference between holding an event in a community and allowing that community to become part of the event. 

For NeighborWorks® America, that distinction matters. 

“Food can bring us together.” For Felix Colon, this is more than just a saying; it’s an action. In North Central Massachusetts, Felix founded Meek and Humble Ministries, a nonprofit organization that cooks, delivers and serves approximately 80 hot meals three times per week to individuals and families in need. Unlike some more traditional programs, Felix loads all the meals in his truck and delivers them to people where they are. 

Olivia Gomez grew up in Planada, a small community of about 4,000 people in California’s Central Valley. Her parents picked tomatoes, peaches and figs, and she lived first in a camp for farm workers. When Self-Help Enterprises, a NeighborWorks network organization in Visalia, opened Bear Creek Housing for farm workers, she and her family moved there. Four years later, she remembers helping her parents as they built a home of their own, also through a Self-Help program.

For more than three decades, the John R. Grubb Community YMCA anchored Des Moines' Northside. It opened in 1994 in a city-owned building at 11th Street and College Avenue, and for families in King-Irving and the surrounding neighborhoods it was one of the few reliable places where children could swim, seniors could exercise, and neighbors could simply run into one another.

Vinegar Hill, the Charlottesville, Virginia, community where Carmelita Wood was born, isn’t here anymore. Once a thriving neighborhood of Black-owned homes and businesses, it was razed in the 1960s, part of an urban renewal program.

Why would an affordable housing developer own a community art gallery? At NHS Greater New Britain, housing and art aren't separate missions. They're complementary parts of one approach to building community. NHS New Britain President & CEO Chris Sanders explained, “NHS Gallery 66 provides us with a powerful focal point for convening and engaging. It is an important part of our mission of making a community a better place to call home.” 

NeighborWorks® America network organizations and industry professionals met at the national nonprofit’s Washington, D.C. headquarters this month to talk about “Getting to the North Star for Shared Equity Housing.” Through five dedicated congressional appropriations beginning in 2019, NeighborWorks invested $12 million to strengthen the national infrastructure for shared equity homeownership. “Now it’s time to figure out what’s next, how to forge partnerships and how to keep moving forward," said Jenne Gaynor, director of Shared Equity Housing for NeighborWorks.

When Britney Russell started her hair styling business in 2011, she already had a vision for where it might take her. 

“I knew that one day I wanted to own a salon where I could not only grow my own career, but also provide a space for other stylists to build theirs,” she said. 

NeighborWorks® America’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) held a convening in Miami Beach this month, part of the NeighborWorks Training Institute. The lessons from panel discussions to in-depth conversations will last long after the event.  

This is how Sir Vin Delights got its name, according to owner Donna Rose: Her husband is nicknamed Sir Vincent, “and I am a delight.” Her juices, sold from Miramar, Florida, now have a brick-and-mortar storefront. But she also has distribution to clients that including the Miami Dolphins training camp.