June 4, 1999
Los Angeles — To keep up with rapid growth in the community development field, the California Collaborative has received a $360,000 grant to recruit and cultivate skilled, local talent for future employment in the field. The collaborative consists of Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) offices in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The grant is part of the five-year, $8-million Human Capital Development Initiative (HCDI), the largest recruitment and training program of its kind in the non-profit sector.
"The community development field is becoming extremely sophisticated," states Elizabeth Macías, a Los Angeles-based LISC program officer. "There is a tremendous need to attract and train the next generation of community development practitioners to ensure that CDCs have the human capacity to continue to revitalize struggling neighborhoods."
HCDI was developed and is being implemented by the National Congress for community Economic Development (NCCED), a Washington, D.C.-based trade association that represents the community development field.
NCCED is funding 10 pilot programs in 13 communities where groups and individuals are collaborating to create solutions that can be shared and replicated across the country. Working with Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Enterprise Foundation field offices, NCCED has established pilot communities in Atlanta, Boston, California (Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, jointly), Chicago, Cleveland, St. Paul, North Carolina, Pacific Northwest (Seattle, WA, and Portland, OR, jointly), Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
The Initiative is designed to attract more than 1,000 new staff members and volunteers to the community development field. It also will strengthen the professional capabilities of current practitioners and develop innovative human-resources programs for use by community development corporations (CDCs) to retain practitioners. CDCs are non-profit organizations that work to rebuild low-income urban and rural communities.
According to NCCED, there are 3,600 CDCs in the U.S., a 64 percent increase since 1994. These groups have built more than 550,000 units of affordable housing; developed 71 million square feet of commercial, industrial, retail and community space; created more than 240,000 jobs; and lent $1.9 billion to 59,000 small businesses.
"Today's CDC professionals need expertise in commercial and retail development, as well as enterprise development and affordable housing," explains Roy Priest, NCCED's president. "HCDI will help us upgrade the skills of current practitioners and create a pool of talented college graduates, community residents and career changers who will drive the field's future growth," he says.
The Initiative is funded by the Ford Foundation and the National Community Development Initiative (NCDI), a consortium of 15 national foundations and corporations and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In addition to the activities taking place in the pilot communities, NCCED has created a number of resources to improve the overall quality of the community development field, including:
the Emerging Leaders Program, which each year bring together 50 to 85 college students from around the country to learn about the field;
the Public Policy Internship Program, which offers up to 30 graduate students the change to gain on-the-job experience at CDCs during the summer;
the Community Development Leadership Association, which shares information on job postings and other community development resources with alumni of various student recruitment programs, keeping them connected to the field;
the Community Development Career Guide, the first commercially published book on careers in community development.
For more information about California's program, please contact Elizabeth Macías at 213-250-9550.
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