Community Development
We Build Resilience in Communities
Our goal is to strengthen the civic infrastructure of vulnerable communities to increase the capacity of individuals and organizations that result in positive change.
We have three main pillars of work in Community Development and Community Initiatives.
Advocacy Initiatives
- Parks and Green Space: organizing park clean-ups, promoting health and wellness programs at neighborhood parks and supporting park upkeep
- Neighborhood Vitality: implementing mural projects, supporting community engagement through activities such as promoting voter registration and census participation
- Health: coordinating health and resource fairs, promoting access to healthy foods and active living programs
- Safety: leading safety initiatives for schools, parks and neighborhoods
- Resident Leadership: partnering with community groups to work on issues such as clean air/air quality, rights for domestic workers and preventing resident displacement.
Health Equity
We are proud to support initiatives that promote health and safety.
As part of this initiative, we have offered free vaccine events, educational health fairs and our project to eliminate lead paint in homes.
In Avenue’s ongoing efforts to promote equitable access to healthcare, we opened Avenue Center and added new services that the neighborhood needed: Legacy Community Health offering primary, behavioral and maternal health services, and YMCA Children’s Academy, providing early childhood education for ages 6 months to five years.
Avenue is proud to partner with Episcopal Health Foundation’s Texas Accountable Communities for Health Initiative (TACHI), a multi-year initiative to support existing collaboratives in our region to become high-functioning and sustainable entities.
Avenue is one of these community-based partnerships formed across sectors, including healthcare, housing, social services, public health, employment training and economic development to focus on a shared vision and responsibility for the health of the community. We are currently working to align our individual interventions for greater collective impact with our collaborative partners.
Health Collaborative Goals:
- Access to Healthy Foods
- Active Living
- Access to Care
Avenue’s collaborative TACHI is called “Communities y Salud Greater Northside” and is comprised of five organizations: Memorial Hermann Community Benefit Corporation, Wesley Community Center, MD Anderson, YMCA and Legacy Community Health. These key community players are located in Greater Northside. Examples of our past and current programming include:
- Memorial Hermann Community Health Needs Assessment Surveys, in collaboration with Wesley Community Center and MD Anderson, to gather information about quality of life issues identified by Greater Northside residents.
- Eight Early Action Projects in the Greater Northside aimed to address the two primary issues identified by the community: obesity and diabetes. These included health fairs, community garden projects, youth programs and food distribution events.
- A partnership with the Core Connections Network and Houston Food Bank to provide a nutrition education program for community members to learn how to manage their chronic health conditions through food, wellness and self-management.
- Creating an Access to Healthy Food POI (Portfolio of Intervention) to gather outputs from partners and projects to measure short term health outcomes.
- Additional programs focused on improving and expanding access to healthy foods through food pantries, community gardens and nutrition education at Clark Park in the Northline community and Wesley Community Center.
Comprehensive Community Development
We develop and nurture many community initiatives that make an impact on individuals and neighborhoods. These include:
- Encouraging Census participation to increase funding that comes into the neighborhood
- Voter registration drives and information to get people to the polls
- Park cleanups and safety audits to increase lighting and activate local parks
- Health and resource fairs (as mentioned above)
- Resources for students and parents
- Much more!