Grantee highlight: Neighborhood Leaders

Gang activity, drug use and prostitution plagued the residents of “The Alley,” the North Amphlett Boulevard corridor that parallels Highway 101 in San Mateo.

By late 2004, illegal activities and the resulting refuse, including used needles and contraceptives, spilled into the laundry rooms and common areas of the apartment complexes that were home to some 400 people. Residents, including many families with children, feared emerging from their apartments when evening fell.

Today, Líderes del Vecindario (“Neighborhood Leaders”), a group spawned at the urging of the San Mateo Police Department and nurtured by Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center with community foundation support, helps maintain the peace that residents and the police department worked so hard to restore during the past two years.

In applying to Silicon Valley Community Foundation for a neighborhood grant, the Líderes del Vecindario organizers wrote in Spanish: “We want more tools of how to help each other so that when something happens, we won’t be scared and we won’t hide.”

In May, Líderes del Vecindario received a $6,000 grant to sponsor summer youth activities, and host two neighborhood clean-up days, a gang and drug prevention presentation for teens and a posada for the neighborhood to enjoy in December. The grant will also help pay for a resident center – a vacant apartment rented at a discount by the apartment complex management – where residents meet, hold leadership classes and workshops, and provide supervised play for children.

“Neighborhood groups and associations are wonderful vehicles for residents to put into action their ideas for building safe strong communities,” said Eleanor Clement Glass, chief giving officer of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. “Strong neighborhoods are the foundation of a strong community and a strong region.”

This spring Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Neighborhood Grants Program awarded 22 grants totaling more than $73,000 to neighborhoods stretching from Gilroy to South San Francisco. The grants will help groups of neighbors deter crime, support clean-up days, pay for neighborhood newsletters, foster participation at neighborhood meetings and information forums, prepare residents for disasters, and sponsor social activities for children and adults.

Sixteen Santa Clara County neighborhoods received grants, including several active neighborhood associations in San José and Gilroy. The community foundation partners with the City of San José’s Neighborhood Development Center to provide Santa Clara County grantees with workshops on topics ranging from financial management to organizing successful events. In San Mateo County, the community foundation has partnered with Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center to provide grantees with technical assistance and leadership support. For a full listing of grantees, see our neighborhood grants press release (PDF).