Neighbor Up! in Greater University Circle

Neighborhood Connections launched a multi-year community-engagement effort in the spring of 2012 in the neighborhoods that comprise “Greater University Circle”. The eight neighborhoods – Glenville, Hough, Fairfax, Central, Shaker Square, Buckeye, Little Italy, and University Circle and the city of East Cleveland – are included in this area. Neighborhood Connections seeks to get the area’s residents more involved and engaged in their community by helping them form personal, group, and organizational connections within and across the eight Greater University Circle neighborhoods. We propose using the model and strategy that Neighborhood Connections has used successfully citywide for the past eight years.

Neighborhood Connections is inviting residents of the neighborhoods around University Circle to participate in an innovative process of building trust and power to lead themselves and their communities to renewed strength, health and connectedness. Networks, with Neighborhood Connections as a learning partner, will learn, practice, and experiment in building community within and across boundaries in the area calledGreater University Circle. By learning and interacting with various networks across Greater University Circle, we hope to strengthenand support those networks and the people in them as they learn to cultivate environments where residents can more easily connect to one another, and to information and opportunity.

Neighborhood Connections believes that Greater University Circle has two major challenges:

Re-populating the civic landscape with residents who are able to take on leadership roles, work together to solve problems and lead the area into a place in the global economy.
Finding a way to help its many struggling families to build assets, escape poverty and build the networks of support they need to succeed.

The Community of Practice will use the principles of Network-Centric Organizing, developed in various communities around the country, as a way to increase bonds within and across the Greater University Circle area.

Open the Door to a Community of Aspiration!

Check out this video from the Kick Off party held in the spring of 2012 to learn more about this community building effort.

Your opinion matters to us!

Please take 15 minutes to complete a community perceptions survey and be entered in a drawing for a $25 gift card. (This survey is for Cleveland and East Cleveland residents only) Click here to complete the survey!

Contact Us!

Contact Danielle Price at dprice@neighborhoodgrants.org/216.229.8719 or Lisa-Jean Sylvia at lsylvia@neighborhoodgrants.org/216.229.0555 for more info on this initiative.