Northwest Atlanta Community Outreach Partnership Center
The neighborhoods of Riverside and Hollywood Court may be ten miles away from the manicured campus of Emory University, but they are Emory’s close community partners, thanks to a $400,000 Community Outreach Partnerships Center (COPC) grant from the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Awarded to Emory’s Office of University-Community Partnerships in November 2004, the three-year grant leverages an additional $1 million in resources from Emory and its community partners to allow dozens of Emory’s brightest undergraduate and graduate students to work alongside Emory faculty, local agencies, and neighborhood leaders in Northwest Atlanta on issues of affordable housing, preservation of community assets, strengthening families, and supporting educational excellence in local public schools.

Affordable Housing and Preserving Community Assets
Atlanta’s neighborhoods are changing; in Northwest Atlanta that change can be seen in the reconstruction of traditional public housing projects as mixed income communities and in the proliferation of infill housing and new developments. While many residents of traditional public housing communities look forward to choosing where next to live, they want affordable housing opportunities to be in the general vicinity so they don’t lose their ties to cherished friends and important community institutions like churches. The challenge is to revitalize in ways that attract wealthier families without displacing less wealthy residents; that means preserving existing private affordable housing stock while also encouraging the development of housing at a variety of price points.

Education for Action
The Northwest Atlanta COPC has been sponsoring a series of workshops and forums to help educate residents about affordable housing issues. (Click here for more information.) [this should take them to page about Housing for All! Summit]

Research for Action
In 2006, a team of Emory undergraduates and alumni completed an inventory of all housing in the Grove Park neighborhood as well as an inventory of all commercial properties, cataloging the condition, tax status, ownership, and other factors for each property. The information is being structured into a database to be used by policymakers and planning officials as they form strategies for the community’s future well being.

Families and Schools
The education and family components of the COPC grew out of the work of Emory’s Community Building Fellows Program during the summer of 2004. Three undergraduate Community Building Fellows worked with parents, teachers, and the Atlanta Housing Authority to design initiatives to support parents as primary partners in the education of children attending Benjamin S. Carson Honors Preparatory School, an Atlanta Public Schools middle school.

Strengthening Families
A series of PACCT (Parents and Children Coming Together) Nights have provided families with opportunities to learn and laugh together. Organized by Emory undergraduates enrolled in a Community Psychology class also responsible for the Middle School Mentoring Program, the PACCT Nights have included Games Night, Movie Night, a visit to Emory’s Carlos Museum to explore body image and definitions of beauty throughout the ages, and a Kwanzaa celebration. Dozens of families have participated over the past three years, many attending nearly every event, a sign that the programs have been beneficial and valuable. Graduate students in clinical psychology worked in homes to boost parents’ communication and nurturing skills.

Supporting K-12 Educational Excellence
Several students in Emory’s Masters of Arts in Teaching program completed their student teaching rotations at Carson and Carson teachers participated in workshops to build their capacity to collaborate with parents for the good of students. The Middle School Mentoring Program began in January 2005 with 18 Carson students; by April 2007 more than twenty-four middle school girls attended the weekly two hour mentoring program, where they were inspired to imagine themselves attending college and excelling in rewarding careers.

The COPC Grant Program
Established in 1994, HUD’s Office of University Partnerships (OUP) is a catalyst for joining colleges and universities with their communities in a shared search for answers to pressing urban problems. The COPC is one of nine grant programs administered by the OUP. Visit www.oup.org to learn more.