Executive Report – 1st Quarter
“The shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living.” – Parker J. Palmer
Renaissance Heights United (RHU) brings together our partners – leaders and staff of organizations working to improve equity opportunity for our neighbors in southeast Fort Worth – into a networked partner advisory structure. Knowledge sharing and collaboration helps leaders tackle the complex challenge of intergenerational urban poverty to achieve racial equity, improved health outcomes and upward mobility for residents
The Renaissance Heights United Partner Advisory Council
At our core, Renaissance Heights United and the Partner Advisory Council (PAC) believes that everyone deserves to live in a healthy, thriving neighborhood. Our neighbors today are still impacted by concentrated poverty rooted in systemic policies and practices both past and present that feed and fuel entrenched racist conditions, beliefs, and stereotypes. Renaissance Heights United seeks to eradicate the long-standing racial disparity of opportunity, in a defined neighborhood, by focusing on mixed-income housing, cradle-to-college education and community wellness.
Strengthening Systems
A key theme from resident interviews, group tours, and small business listen sessions was a call for better communication, collaboration, and coordination across and among social services, health, education, transportation, workforce, and governmental systems.
“It’s not that any one of them has the solution, but they all have a piece of the puzzle. Sometimes they don’t even put their pieces out to make the puzzle, and I think that’s the greatest dilemma.”
Small Business Owner Participant
What’s really cool about this and it’s what gets me really excited about this work is our opportunity to create a blueprint for how to develop a community of practice. With the partners and people all working together, sharing all the expertise to learn and grow together. RHU gets to harvest all the knowledge, experiences, great ideas, and the problems that surface in your service delivery to share that information together and to learn from it to accelerate our work going forward. As the community quarterback organization, we provide great benefits to both our service delivery partners and neighbors, but at this stage in the game this community of practice becomes so rich and important in the process of us learning together and moving forward together – it’s a game changer!
As we continue this work, I encourage you to have a systems-thinking hat on and be thinking about who benefits by the way things are, and who doesn’t? Think about it in your work, your planning, and how disruptive and united we have to be in this work.
Event Credit: Brave/r Together 76104 l UnitedWay of Tarrant County
Renaissance Heights Executive Director, Kenny Mosley presenting at 76104 Ambassador Roundtable
“It was a privilege to better understand the small business needs and historical perspectives. I was privileged to get proximate, bring encouragement and talk potential business opportunities to achieve greater racial equity, economic mobility and better health outcomes in southeast Fort Worth.” – Kenny Mosley, Jr.
Workforce Development and Employment
Our residents see the need for more job training to expand their knowledge and learn new skills that appeal to the employers in the neighborhood. Thanks to the strategic development efforts by our partners at Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County, residents at Columbia Renaissance Square can now explore career pathways, view job postings, register for free online new hire learning, and receive workforce services, whether an individual is looking for a first job, a new job or to advance in their chosen field.
“Help people prepare for and get good jobs, because people can’t change their lives if they don’t have income. They just can’t”
Resident Interview Participant
Job Fairs and Hiring Events Coming Spring 2022 to Renaissance Heights
Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County is collaborating with RHU, to connect resident job seekers with employers looking to hire. Upcoming events will be in-person employment opportunities to best meet the needs of Columbia Renaissance Square job seekers and employers. Want to learn more? Click on the link below: [email protected]
There Is Still Much To Learn
Despite what we have learned, there is still much to be discovered about revitalizing Renaissance Heights. While it is one thing to arrive at the conclusion that our defined neighborhood matters, it is quite another to truly understand what makes a healthy neighborhood, how neighborhood health generates positive outcomes for the residents, how we can most effectively transform southeast Fort Worth from distressed to health, and what allows a healthy neighborhood to sustain itself in a largely independent manner.
There is a tremendous amount of research being done on these and other related issues, and I hope will shed further light on the problem of intergenerational urban poverty. I hope to take full advantage of those insights in our own work at Renaissance Heights United and by doing so make a small contribution to this national effort.
Best,
Kenny Mosley, Jr.
Executive Director,
Renaissance Heights Foundation