Strengthening distressed communities in St. Louis: SLACO partners with local organizations to improve quality of life and promote community development.
Letter To the Editor
I want to take the opportunity to share another exciting SLACO initiative. For the last three years, SLACO has been collaborating with St. Louis Public Schools, the Urban League, Harris-Stowe State University, and Washington University in St. Louis to develop an intervention strategy for highly distressed neighborhoods.
Working with the KingsVille community, a eighteen block designated/target area that straddles the Kingsway East and the Greater Ville neighborhoods—SLACO and its partners aim to create a method that can be replicated in neighborhoods that suffer from hyper-vacancy and significant population loss. The basic premise of this methodology which we call the B.E.S.T. Approach is to use the neighborhood school and other anchor institutions to address the basic needs of the residents before attempting to introduce new housing or economic development.
Focusing on physically improving the community (B=Beautification), strengthening the neighborhood school (E=Education), dealing with the social, economic, environmental, and safety challenges of the residents (S=Service and Safety) and providing support to the local community organization to build organizational capacity (T=Technical assistance), the B.E.S.T. Approach offers a set of tactics aimed to stabilize underserved communities by making them more attractive places to live and increasing the quality of life of the residents.
Blessed with possessing a strong neighborhood school (Hickey Elementary), a bedrock community anchor (Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church), and an active community organization (KingsVille Neighborhood Association), the KingsVille community has proven to be the ideal community to test the B.E.S.T. Approach.
While SLACO and its partners have been working in KingsVille for a short period, the B.E.S.T. Approach has already produced significant tangible results. Through a generous grant from the City’s Community Development Agency Neighborhood Transformation program, SLACO has been able to greatly expand its KIC (Keeping It Clean) initiative in the community by hiring additional neighborhood youth for alley clean-ups and the mowing of vacant lots. Financial support from the Urban League has allowed Hickey School to hire interns from Harris-Stowe State University for its afterschool program which has enabled the school to serve three times as many students. Moreover, an internal grant from Washington University has supported Sam Fox faculty to chart baseline conditions in KingsVille, as well as assess the impact of the B.E.S.T. Approach in the community and determine next steps.
If you would like to learn more about the project, I would be more than happy to discuss the initiative further.
Warm regards,
Kevin B. McKinney, Executive Director (SLACO)
5888 Plymouth Ave. St. Louis, MO 63112
314 361 9406, www.slaco-mo.org
For a full list of SLACO neighborhoods: http://slaco-mo.org/neighborhoods/
#SLACO #StLouis #CommunityDevelopment
