Dear neighbor,
Over the years, our Collective Impact Lincoln team has considered different ways to address and discuss a topic that occasionally comes up in our conversations with residents: safety. While resident concerns on this topic are something we don’t want overstate – by and large, we know our neighborhoods are safe places to live, work, and play – we also recognize that without a sense of personal and environmental safety, other neighborhood growth is more difficult to envision and achieve.
So let’s talk about it. Starting this month, Collective Impact Lincoln is building a space for the community to discuss safety matters. The first opportunity is 6 p.m. Aug. 25, when we host the first in a series of virtual Community Builder Workshops that will focus on neighborhood safety. Register now to save your seat via Eventbrite.
These gatherings will:
- Provide participants with the tools to create a safer community, handle nonviolent situations or prevent crimes from happening in applicable situations;
- Consider when and when not to call the police or alternatives to involving law enforcement; and
- Connect Lincolnites with resources on common safety topics of interest.
This series came about as a result of conversations with our South of Downtown Community Development Organization partners and Everett neighborhood residents. Recently, a group has been meeting at Pepe’s Bistro to discuss safety concerns in their neighborhood, and we believe this is a strong foundation for a larger conversation. The new series will address concerns within all six Lincoln neighborhoods that make up our initiative – Everett, Near South, Hartley, Belmont, University Place, and Clinton.
What should attendees expect? For the first workshop on Aug. 25, a community conversation to define what neighborhood safety looks like to an individual, a business owner, an organization, and so on. Community members Pepe Fierro, Lindsay Limbach, and Maghie Miller will facilitate this first conversation. Then, Collective Impact Lincoln will take what comes from it to build the focus areas of the next workshops in this new series.
Going forward, Collective Impact Lincoln will invite experts to share advice and resources based on neighborhood residents’ topics of interest – child safety, drugs, mental health, sexual harassment, sex trafficking, or policing, to name a few examples.
Our communities are stronger when we all own them together! Our new Community Builder Workshop series is a direct way to do just that. We’re looking forward to seeing you and hearing your thoughts on Aug. 25.
Thanks for all that you do,
Nancy Petitto
Director, Collective Impact Lincoln
