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The New Orleans Fund

This year I’ve had the privilege of working in New Orleans with the residents of the Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods (known together as the Pontilly neighborhoods).. As you can imagine, conditions in the city are still very difficult. Residents of Pontilly and many other neighborhoods are facing, and will continue to face, hard emotional and financial decisions about returning and rebuilding. (a small gallery of photographs from the Visioning and Planning Conference)

As you might expect the challenges that our friends in Pontilly face are multiplied many times over in neighborhoods throughout the City of New Orleans. There were upwards of 200,000 homes destroyed by flooding! (a small gallery of photographs from the neighborhoods)

The people of New Orleans want to be part of the solution and are coming together in passionate neighborhood meetings. For example, in March we facilitated an all-day visioning and planning conference for three-hundred fifty Pontilly residents. We did this with volunteers from Wisconsin, neighborhood residents, New Orleans city staff and many facilitation volunteers.

Citywide, the number of neighborhood meetings, the depth of the discussions, and the stresses on the people involved are daunting to say the least. I have been asked by pastors, elected officials and other neighborhood leaders to help with many of these meetings and I’m writing now to ask you to provide support for the essential grass roots work that I have the unique skills to facilitate.

Even as state, federal and foundation monies are starting to flow into the city sponsoring substantial “big picture” planning ideas, they are not supporting the on-going involvement of local residents. Many of you to whom I’m writing know from your own community experience how important it is for citizens to work together in small groups to move their ideas forward. You also recognize how valuable it is for such small groups to have a facilitator/coach present to help them stay on track. From my work with you, I know you fully appreciate how effective these small group follow-up teams are in achieving results. And, finally, you know how often residents are dealt with at arms length by ‘the powers that be.’

Together, you and I can help meet the need for citizen action teams in New Orleans by starting a fund to coach and support their productivity. This fund will be a resource that local residents will match as they organize their action teams with our help. This is a program of action that will trigger leadership at the governmental level because it will create specific solutions within the big picture for rebuilding the city neighborhood-by- neighborhood. We call this process “Crafting Community” and we are asking you to catalyze the fund that will support “Crafting Community” into the larger planning work of the city.   Your contribution will support the contributions of the many volunteers working at the neighborhood level to envision and build the future of New Orleans.

With this appeal we hope to raise $10,000 towards our goal of $100,000 for the “Crafting Community Fund.” The fund will be administered by the Center for Community Stewardship, a 501(c)3 public charity that I founded a few years ago to assist communities with grass roots strategic planning.

Ultimately, our $100,000 fund will facilitate 100s of citizens on action teams helping the most hard-hit and least affluent neighborhoods in the City.

I know you are committed to the role of local citizens in determining their own destiny. In New Orleans this role is very difficult for people who have been devastated by flooding and wind.  

The Crafting Community Fund offers you a unique opportunity to help others like yourself take charge of their future. Please consider making a personal, business or community contribution to the important strategic conversations and on-the-ground work of the neighborhoods in New Orleans that are setting the city’s course. Together we can bring a bit more hope along with the action steps that will make their strategic conversations real.  

As you review your charitable giving at the end of the year you may want to consider a contribution to the Center for Community Stewardship’s special Crafting Community Fund.

Please make your check payable to The Center for Community Stewardship and mail it with the attached form to Linda Marx, Treasurer, Center for Community Stewardship, Inc. c/o Summit Credit Union ____________________ (street/PO Box address). Don’t forget to include your email address on the form so we can keep you informed and share the stories.

Please scroll down for three websites that tell you more about the Center for Community Stewardship, The Pontilly Neighborhood Association and a special article about the March Visioning and Planning Conference.

Thank you for your generous support of this important project in New Orleans.

Best Regards,

Bert Stitt

P.S.  Your contribution will support a critical missing piece of organizational effort by people at the grass roots who are the source of New Orleans great contributions to American culture. The Crafting Community Fund enables these neighbors to convene, to discuss, and to take action towards their future together. Thank you!

Here, you will find a few web links that will provide more background information

The Center for Community Stewardship (under construction) website: http://www.community-stewardship.org

The Pontilly Neighborhood Association website: http://www.pontilly.com/

Click here to read and see photos from “An Ode to Katrina’s Winds and Waters of Change” by Bert Stitt with photographs by George Lottermoser in the e-zine Be(ing) There Volume 2, Number 1 at: http://www.imagist.com/behere/be_here_02_01.pdf  Go to page Five.

You may need to copy and paste the links into your browser.

Vision

Providing citizens the opportunity to engage in discussions, establish strategies and take actions regarding matters which affect the life of the community. Providing citizen-engagement models that take care to reduce the emotional, physical, spiritual and political suffering of persons holding differing views regarding what is right and wrong, should or should not be done. Reducing and eliminating the leverage of special interests and “stakeholders” in domineering citizen influence and increasing the level of thoughtful, rational, productive citizen engagement.

Mission

Find the resources, monetary and human, to create and execute skillful models that will provide individual citizens and ad hoc groups with the confidence that they too can successfully pursue meaningful change in their communities. Conduct research that more deeply illuminates the underlying causes of societal distrust of governments, academia, and professionals. Conduct research in the field of citizen research/action work groups, peer-to-peer learning and teaching, and blending independent/ad hoc citizen work with governmental policies and operations as well as the work of professional planners.

Purpose

To improve the environment within which the wisdom of the common person can be plumbed for the best possible approaches to untangling the “messes” of public life. To create an environment within which the collective wisdom of common people can be fully honored. To establish the tools whereby citizens can engage in the activity of more productively applying their wisdom. To reduce the great costs of time and money which are often engendered in public decisions/projects when citizens are not skillfully or authentically consulted.

Contribution Form

Crafting Community Fund

YES, I would like to support the grassroots work in New Orleans