02-01-17 Community Relations - Laserfiche WebLink

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reference Mayor Pete Buttigieg's executive order signed last year supporting the City of South Bend's Diversity and Inclusion Initiative. She believes it to be an important document because it looks at real ways to address the issues that are constantly talked about. She read an excerpt from enable each and the document, We believe that we must every individual to reach their full potential. In order to do that, we must erode the barriers that exist...We must work intentionally to incorporate into the whole those persons, or groups, who have historically been underrepresented and underserved by the government...The Office and Director of Community Investment will invest in people to create opportunities for everyone to thrive." Committee Chair Williams-Preston then showed a video titled `The Cleveland Model,' found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v--s_kLye-6VBc The video calls upon what are defined as `anchor institutions' —i.e. local non-profits such as hospitals, universities, municipal governments—and challenges them to invest in people starting cooperative organizations within their local community. Kelly Hoggard, 735 Huey St.,talked about the 1,000 homes in 1,000 days initiative and the effect of that initiative in his immediate neighborhood. There are people, young people,who want to work on solutions to unemployment and homelessness. He referenced the Cleveland Model and how it has expanded to Rochester,NY, highlighting the fact that Rochester has a progressive mayor who has allocated funding toward vacant properties. He then stressed the importance of finding people with gravitas and grass-root experience to champion the idea of a Community Land Trust in specific areas. Pastor Hardie Blake, 144 N. Summit, shared his idea termed `Blakenomics.' Current programs like Project Impact work with ex-offenders, unemployed persons, and homeless persons in effort to transform their lives, primarily looking for jobs for these individuals. Blakenomics focuses on creating wealth for the whole community, as opposed to just a few people, from the bottom up, making the poorest of people the actual owners of businesses. A possible way of accomplishing this would be to offer stock shares or savings incentives for these individuals by attending classes that teach economics and personal finance knowledge. Jessica Bonnano, Cleveland, OH, introduced herself as the presenter of the evening representing the Democracy Collaborative, a think-tank organization that publishes and promotes different community economic development strategies that emphasize equity and inclusion. Primarily, they rely on broad-based ownership as a best practice strategy, while also recognizing how different communities have different outcomes. She shared her experience in Notre Dame graduate school and her excitement to be back in the city. She stated her hope of sharing some national best practices to spark conversation and thought toward implementing something similar in South Bend. The presentation title is Community Wealth Building (CWB), a term used by the Democracy Collaborative to describe an approach to economic development that emphasizes broad-based ownership,place-based development strategies and seeks to produce more inclusive outcomes. Two (2)principles that are fundamental to CWB: The first principle recognizes the relationship between system structure and system behavior—the structure will determine the behavior. Because behavior produces outcomes, system structure indirectly affects the outcome. The key lever in system structure is ownership,the second principle to CWB. Ownership matters because the people that own assets are the ones directly affected when decisions or investments 2