The year started with a lot of momentum and a great deal of promise. Working alongside All Saints’ Episcopal, LPD, Code Enforcement, and the Dream Center, we made significant strides building relationships with the stakeholders and residents of the North Lake Wire neighborhood, just west of the Parker Street neighborhood. We were looking forward to so much more.
Serving in North Lake Wire
Neighborhood workdays are very visible signs of neighborhood-revitalization – one of our goals. They show no one is alone in this work. They allow us to work side-by-side with new neighbors from inside and outside of our neighborhood. Each person shows up, though for different reasons, and works toward the same goals. The community is invested in seeing neighborhoods improved, beautiful, and functioning as they were intended.
The last workday was March 14. And then, Coronavirus put everything on hold. Workdays and volunteers that had been calendared were postponed indefinitely. The momentum was gone. For a couple of weeks we packed it in and moved operations home. Zoom and all that.
Working Side-by-Side with New Neighbors
Polk County School lunches delivered daily
Then opportunities to get back in and get back to work appeared. We pivoted to host Polk County School meal distribution, became a pickup site for kidsPACK, built take-home kits for everything from Easter Egg hunts to Census participation, and dusted off an old commercial grill to take barbecue to the streets. Neighborhood families we struggled to keep up with came onsite again to pick up lunches. New families came too. Churches and other non-profits shared food from their surpluses. We sat beside bus drivers and school counselors who love our students and families just as much as we do. The neighborhood rallied against a gentrifying zoning change request with 45 signing petitions and several, not just staff, speaking up for their properties via an online meeting. City staff said it was the most participation at a zoning hearing since they moved online. And all of this wouldn’t have happened without this COVID stuff.
It’s too easy for me to think that it’s us against the world. To think that the staff and our board are on the wall like Nehemiah, hammer in one hand, sword in the other with this enormous task to rebuild all that is broken. God’s big. He’s with us. Stay on the wall. Unfortunately, unlike Nehemiah, I tend to pride myself on pivoting, being flexible, walking and chewing gum. That’s what life (as I have known it) in community development work has been like for the last decade.
Valleyview Elementary onsite to meet their families
What has been encouraging and challenging to that perspective is that through all of this we became aware of the many people who have been working on other parts of the wall. For this season, we all came to this one spot to work where there is the greatest need. For this season, in the face of obstacles we have so little control over, we gathered for the task right in front of us. For the staff at Parker Street Ministries, and like Nehemiah, instead of “work hard,” we learned to rally to the need and trust that “Our God will fight for us.” (Nehemiah 4:20)
So, fall is here with most all of the uncertainties that were there before, but there is renewed hope in God with Us and renewed momentum built from knowing others are working side-by-side in their own spots toward the same goals.
-William Wainwright, Director of Facilities & Neighborhood Stabilization and Staff Advocate for a Desirable Neighborhood