[Community Highlights] [Success Stories [1] [2] [3] [Press Release]

How does a community define its dreams? In 12 counties of central Alabama, volunteers and professional staff led a citizen-driven process to develop a vision for a future that its citizens can be proud of - and then to assist in its creation.
According to Ann Florie, executive director of Region 2020, grassroots participation was the key to deciding what issues were important to the people of Jefferson, Shelby and 10 other central Alabama counties. In more than 23 meetings over 18 months/years, more than 5,000 people gathered to express their opinions about everything from the value of preserving natural resources to changes in governmental structure to allow for Home Rule.
"The process offered an opportunity people don't often have," Florie says. "The format allowed for participation and brought people together across political, socio-economic and racial boundaries. And it was particularly attractive to young people who don't often have a chance to participate. It offered everyone the chance to provide meaningful input at the local level to define our future."
Today, the charts assembled during all those meetings still line the walls of Region 2020 offices in downtown Birmingham, directing and challenging Florie and others as they try to bring reality to the dreams of the region's residents. Primarily, that means serving as a facilitator, keeping the communication flowing between organizations with expertise in a particular area.
"We want to be the communications link throughout the region," says Florie. "One of the things I think we've done is to provide bridging opportunities to promote an environment conducive to people working together in collaborative ways."
Because of that "bridging" role, a key component of social capital, Florie is looking forward to the results of the recent Social Capital Benchmark Survey on March 1.
"This data can affirm the legitimacy and credibility of our process and the projects that were identified, as well as the importance of going about this in the right way," says Florie. "The results may help to determine the kind of projects we fund and initiate as well as how we structure them."
A pilot program to create affordable housing in Woodlawn is an example of what Region 2020 is already doing to bring together organizations with needed expertise. According to Florie, this effort will serve as a blueprint for how other communities across the region can one day create partnerships to revitalize their own neighborhoods.
"It's about systemic change, not addressing the issues in the same way," explains Florie. "Region 2020 first was involved in the citizen-driving 'visioning' process that identified common goals for the central Alabama region. Now Region 2020 is working to manage and broker the implementation of those goals - not to DO them but to insure that they get done -- to convene, to nurture, to create an environment for them to happen, perhaps assisting with human and financial resources."
Florie also believes in the importance of organizations working together, of people making connections from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood - the very connections that political scientist Robert Putnam stresses when he talks about the importance of "bridging" and "bonding" in social capital.
"To address these issues takes collaboration and the process brings communities, people and organizations together," Florie says, acknowledging the role of funding support from The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and others. "Our only legitimacy is in the credibility and power of the process."
Region 2020 is already making an impact beyond its 12 counties, however. Just as Chattanooga's efforts led to what has happened here, Region 2020 serves as a model for others in Knoxville, Montgomery and Pensacola.
"We are generalists," Florie insists. "Our role is not to provide answers but direction, to broker relationships and trust."
In a world where social capital has as much value as money in the bank, that is no small achievement.