Our Goal

Investing in Capacity —

The Community Building Initiative (CBI) is a unique approach to promoting community health and safety.

It is not focused on a particular issue or problem. It is guided by a set of explicit values and driven by model focused on building community cohesion, skills, and relationships that enable a community to address a issue of interest through collective action. This learning agenda builds sustainable community power. CBI’s goal is that communities continue to address upstream issues long after the grant period has ended.

CBI’s goal is that communities continue to address upstream issues long after the grant period has ended.

The CBI Power Building Academy

It is helpful to think of CBI as a “Community Power-Building Academy.” A practical field course on how to work together effectively to make change. Neighborhoods who participate in the “Academy” will:

  • Strengthen the fabric of community by building a sense of shared place
  • Continually reinforce bonds between neighbors to ensure sustained collective action
  • Partner with external stakeholders and organizations to support neighborhood efforts to resolve issues
  • Lead change aimed at social, structural, environmental, economic, and political conditions (upstream issues)
  • Challenge systemic racism and other conditions that negatively impact health

CBI has one overriding objective: A progressive increase in a neighborhood’s ability to work together to address upstream issues through sustained community-driven planning and action following the grant period.

Stage-Dependent Components

CBI knows that all communities have inherent skills, knowledge, experience, insight, and leadership. CBI enhances existing capacities and builds the ability of neighbors to work together on issues of shared concern. It is a stepwise process that includes:

  • A core team of members who lead and facilitate the neighborhood’s self-driven action
  • A process that builds and refines to create strategic partnerships that advance a community’s agenda
  • Neighborhood perspectives that routinely inform local priorities