Programs and Issues
DUDLEY NEIGHBORS, INC. (DNI)
DSNI’s community land trust, named Dudley Neighbors, Inc., is situated on 32 acres in Roxbury and North Dorchester. It is a separate entity from DSNI, but shares some staff and DSNI’s board appoints over half of its board. Since it began in 1988, DNI has grown to 226 housing units, and in that time, only four have been foreclosed on. (Of those, one was unrelated to the mortgage crisis, and the others occurred after the film was completed.) The most recent house was constructed in 2015 by YouthBuild Boston.
DNI is focused on supporting leaders of emerging land trusts across the country who are interested in using the CLT model to meet their own communities’ goals and recently helped launch the Greater Boston CLT Network with grassroots groups from several Boston neighborhoods.. The organization is also helping land trust homeowners learn how to better maintain their homes, set financial goals, and get their credit on track. As part of its mission to expand access to healthy food for Dudley neighborhood residents, DNI leased land to The Food Project as an urban farm and in 2013 it became part of the land trust. The crops grown on the farm by the staff and youth are sold at the local farmers market.
THE SALVATION ARMY KROC CENTER
Near the end of Gaining Ground, DSNI and its members were shocked and upset to learn that membership rates to the large community center were well out of reach of the average neighborhood resident: $75-85 a month per family.
That may be changing with new Salvation Army leadership. Major Lopes, who has ties to the Roxbury neighborhood, and his staff members have been meeting with DSNI to improve their relationship.
During DSNI’s 30th anniversary events in 2014, Lopes announced a plan to lower membership fees. Though the proposal was controversial internally, and required significant fundraising, it went into effect in January 2015. The new rates are lower than the old rates, and there are further reduced-rate memberships that people apply for by pre-qualifying through involvement with the organizations in the neighborhood.
SUFFOLK CONSTRUCTION
Suffolk Construction helped ensure the Kroc Center was built by one of the most diverse workforces in Boston’s history. The contractor hit ambitious and unprecedented targets for employing local workers, women, and minorities. The company’s director of diversity and workforce compliance, Brian McPherson, joined DSNI’s board of directors in 2007. Dudley’s case study of the Kroc Center construction project and the lessons they learned from it is used as a guide for other companies wanting a strategic plan for creating diversity in the workplace.
YOUTH PROGRAMS
CommunityScapes, the youth-run neighborhood landscaping program portrayed in the film through which young residents cleared vacant land, created parks, planted trees, and built raised beds for flower and vegetable gardens, is now integrated into DSNI’s larger Youth Jobs Program.
Youth Organizers employs young residents during the summer and the school year to focus on areas of interest to the DSNI community: education and career, arts and culture, land and youth jobs. The employment program focuses on four key skills: communication, community organizing, critical thinking and teamwork.
The Youth Jobs Rally, organized a coalition of youth organizations across the state, still happens annually during school vacation to ensure that youth voices and priorities are heard by state budget decision-makers.
The Dudley Youth Council (DYC), which produced the call-in radio show where the local young people discussed topics of interest to the DSNI youth and community, put the radio show on hold in 2013. Youth leaders say they would like to bring back the program. They have added other skills to their repertory and have made several short films. Similar to the radio show, they’ve used the medium of film to tackle tough topics fearlessly and with great insight.