New Orleans neighbourhood forum focuses on cross-sector partnership

15 April 2008

Building effective partnerships between community leaders and companies was the focus of a Neighborhood Leadership Forum in New Orleans on 5 April 2008.

The Forum was co-facilitated by Jane Nelson, Director at IBLF and Director of the Corporate Social Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, and sought to establish how companies can work with communities to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Neighborhood leaders have played a crucial and inspiring role in the difficult process of rebuilding the city, and many of them exemplify the best in social entrepreneurship.

The goal of the Forum, which was entitled Increasing Community-Level Resources and Impact through Cross-Sector Alliances, was to support and learn from these leaders and social entrepreneurs by sharing best practices in identifying, building, and maintaining successful partnerships.

Large corporations played an important role in the immediate response period after Katrina, but there is still a great need and opportunity for more innovative alliances to be built between companies and neighborhood organisations in a range of areas, from education, after school programmes and youth development, to housing, environmental restoration, and small enterprise development.

Each of the 75 participants received a copy of The Partnering Toolbook - IBLF's guide to effective cross-sector partnering which to date has been translated into 14 languages.

The Forum series was part of "The Broadmoor Project," a collaboration initiated by Senior Fellow Doug Ahlers in 2006 when Harvard Kennedy School students traveled to the New Orleans neighborhood of Broadmoor in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to assist residents in designing a strategy for neighborhood recovery. Since then, dozens of Harvard students, staff and faculty have worked alongside residents who have personified the vitality of their neighborhood by continuing to define its future.

Outstanding neighborhood leaders share their experiences and lessons

The participants shared their experiences in developing partnerships with companies, universities, foundations, faith groups, and other neighborhoods. The long-term aim is to develop tools and guidelines that can be more widely used by other communities around the world, especially those recovering from conflict and natural disasters.

The event included presentations from four neighborhood leaders, highlighting the variety of roles that partners have played since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in September 2005.

LaToya Cantrell (pictured, right) of the Broadmoor Improvement Association described the network of corporate, foundation, and university partners her community has developed from the Clinton Global Initiative to Deutsche Bank, AT&T, Digitas and the Carnegie Foundation to undertake numerous revitalisation projects including restoration of its community center and library, and the creation of a Community Development Corporation.

Patricia Jones of the Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association spoke about her work partnering with organisations such as the Good Work Network and the Urban Entrepreneur Partnership of the Gulf Coast to provide training, loans, and other assistance to help low-income entrepreneurs start and maintain their businesses.

Pam Dashiell of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association shared of her efforts to bring together many small neighborhood groups into a stakeholder coalition. The coalition has partnered with universities and environmental groups to restore a cypress swamp that serves as a buffer against storm surge.

Kevin Brown of the Trinity Christian Community Center described his organisation's partnership with AmeriCorps, which has deployed 100 volunteers to support community rebuilding efforts.

Two of the characteristics of partners that neighborhood leaders said they value most are flexibility and entrepreneurial thinking.

For example, before the hurricane, improving youth literacy was the primary focus of AmeriCorps members working with the Trinity Christian Community Center. After the hurricane, most youth had left New Orleans and schools were closed. However, before literacy could be a focus again, the community had to be physically rebuilt - so AmeriCorps broadened its mission to include community restoration and increased the number of volunteers ten-fold.

Generous support for the Neighborhood Leadership Forum series was provided by Shell Oil Company and Walter Shorenstein, among others.

Related Links
More on The Partnering Toolbook
More on Harvard University's New Orleans Recovery project

Contact
IBLF corporate partners that are interested in learning more about partnership opportunities with local community leaders and social entrepreneurs in New Orleans should contact:

At IBLF:
Emma Barthes, Project Manager
email firstname.surname@iblf.org
At Harvard:
Jane Nelson, Director of the CSR Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School
email jane_nelson@harvard.edu

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