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The Springfield Project
Solving Neighborhood Problems Through Collaboration
P.O. Box 961 ● Springfield, Illinois 62705 ● office: (217) 206-7688 ● fax: (217) 206-7693
website: www.thespringfieldproject.com ● email: info@thespringfieldproject.org

Program Overview

 

Program Initiatives

•  Housing

•  Crime Prevention

•  Summer Youth Employment

•  Education

•  Mentoring/Tutoring

•  Resident Empowerment

•  City-Wide Trash & Refuse Compliance

 

 

Neighborhood Revitalization Program

1. TSP focuses on neighborhood revitalization through:

  • organizing and empowering neighborhood residents

  • addressing needed changes in the City code and code enforcement

  • addressing trash and refuse problems providing housing and home ownership through TSP's HOPE

  • providing low cost housing materials through Building Resource Inc.

2. The overall goal of TSP is to assist change in neighborhoods that will be
sustainable in the long-term. We recognize there are many models to do this work.  We are currently in the following three ways:

  • With TSP as the primary organizing force, working with residents to help them gain control of their neighborhood area. TSP has been engaged in this type of organizing in the Mather Welles neighborhood from 11th Street to 18th Street and the north side of Cook street to the alley just north of Jackson Street.

  • Joining with other organizations that want to establish a neighborhood revitalization program, a good example is the planned effort to work in the Lake Victoria neighborhood with Abundant Faith Christian Center, Weed and Seed, and others.

  • Assisting those who are already involved in neighborhood revitalization. A good example is TSP assistance to the Enos Park Neighborhood Association to help that association in its efforts to revitalize its north side neighborhood.

 3. When TSP chooses a neighborhood for collaboration, TSP will assist the leadership:

  • We start with the core belief that the only way revitalization will occur is if residents within a given neighborhood are organized, working together, and exercising power and control over their neighborhood.

  • We define the neighborhood area as small and tightly knit as possible. Neighborhood power can most easily be exercised in such small areas. For example, the East Side is not a neighborhood. It may not even be possible for this purpose to consider the area from Cook Street to South Grand Avenue and 11th Street to 18th Street as a neighborhood because it is so big.

  • Our focus is not on providing services, but rather on working with the residents to help them obtain the resources they need to improve their lives.

  • We start with neighborhood organizing; then we work on the housing environment through TSP's HOPE to change the area. This is based on the view that the more home ownership  there is in any given area, the more the residents will exercise control over that area.

  • TSP's HOPE will purchase, renovate, and provide ownership of housing, building on the resident organizing of TSP. It is the goal of both TSP and TSP's HOPE to involve residents who purchase homes in the TSP neighborhood in the neighborhood resident organization.

  • The Springfield Project is a not-for profit 501c(3) organization.