Neighborhood Resilience Project

The Neighborhood Resilience Project supports communities suffering from trauma by holistically addressing community needs: we implement trauma-informed interventions, help people obtain basics like food and shelter, provide health care through our Free Health Clinic, offer mental health support through our Trauma Response Team, run several programs that focus on developing leaders within the community, and much more. The aim of all these programs is to build community well-being and resilience. In 2023 we impacted over 20,000 people through our work. To learn more about the Neighborhood Resilience Project and our work, please visit our website or see our recent informational video. 

Our Mission:

Rooted in the Gospel and teachings of the Orthodox Church, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement (American 1950s-1960s), the mission of the Neighborhood Resilience Project is to support the transformation of neighborhoods from Trauma Affected Communities to Resilient Healing and Healthy Communities through Trauma Informed Community Development.

Our Vision:

To inspire a movement in which suffering people are raised up from the ashes of trauma in unconditional love to become empowered healers, community builders, and positive change makers.

What is Trauma Informed Community Development:

As informed by the lived experience of trauma, both personal and collective, Trauma Informed Community Development is a framework that establishes and promotes resilient healing and healthy communities so that people can be healthy enough to sustain opportunity and realize their potential.

This work is accomplished through three program areas - Community Support, Health and Wellbeing and Leadership Development. These program areas equate to Engage, Heal and Empower. The programs in each of the areas are highlighted below: 

Within the Community Support Programming are the following programs: 

1. The food and clothing pantry 
2. Weekly meals 
3. Weekend bagged lunch distribution 
4. Backpack feeding program - offering six meals each weekend to 1,200 children across the region
5. Emergency relief - a program to provide financial support for people who are behind on their rent or bills or who need an ID or Birth Certificate. 
6. Twice a day therapeutic groups.

Within the Health and Well-being Programming are the following: 

1. The Free Health Center - providing free primary, behavioral and dental care to people who are uninsured. 
2. Community Health Deputies - community members who are deputized to outreach to underserved communities, to provide informal mental health supports and offer health and wellness clinics as well as referrals to more follow up care to help reduce the death gap. 
3. Micro-Community Interventions - year-long interventions in which micro-communities utilize H.O.P.E. (Health and Well-being, Opportunity Making, Placemaking and Engaging Influencers) Plan to transform from a Trauma Affected Community to a Resilient Healing and Healthy Community. 
4. Trauma Response Team - deploying to administer Psychological First Aid such as to care for the acute needs of those who knew the victims of homicides related to gun violence. 

Within the Leadership Development Programming are the following: 

1. Training Community Health Deputies and Volunteer Trauma Responders. 
2. Building up leadership within the micro-communities to continue lifestyles of health and well-being for the long term. 
3. Being a training site for many different interns of many different disciplines. 
4. Training Cohorts from across the nation in the Trauma Informed Community Development Framework.