employerica is the coordinator for nert. >> yes. >> tell us about the nert people to prepare and succeed in neighb. >> community preparedness is straight across the board and disaster is something we might face. it's good to be part of something more than disaster preparedness and disaster preparedness being an important component. our lives will be disrupted by a major earthquake or other event. it might be the big one but the rock slide in north beach was an example of why to get ready. >> today in the break out session what kinds of things will people hear about. >> we have a training program in the firefighter free of charge. we give people skill necessas i training and we help them branch out and meet members of the

community. >> we have sophie here, sophie you are a resident of san san francisco and trained nert. why did you decide to train to be on the nert team. >> i was commuting with a friend and i announced i was pregnant he said there is no way a responsible moerth should be ready for an oerth quake. we pushed me to get training. i took the nert training probably 2 weeks later. and this month after month, year after year you go to another drill and you join your 5 find new fáfriends. involved in nert it's helped you get to know your neighborhood better and it made your neighborhood stronger? >> yes, we moved to another neighborhood in the city what i really like, i met people i would have not met. it's people i don't work with or

go to the same churcho shop at the same place but they are on my street. it's the people that we worsen the disaster on my house or help me after a disaster. i have to choose if they are my friends or enemies. in training you help each pn÷û-, which is great. a$ñ that's what it's all about it people coming together, for the first 72 hours you need to pull together; right . >> it's about resources being stretched too thinw3 in. after math everyone is trying to get their bearings andh!,?$ç settled. as professionals we will overwhelmed. the community is the true first respondir. >> fantastic if you go to the website empowerment sf. org you can learn about this incredible program and learn why san

francisco is the leader on this issue. we will see you later on. watch the amazing break out session and check out empower sf. >> hi, this is daniel homsey we are talking to oliver about the break out sesm tell us about your organizations and what you are doing to make this neighborhood a better place to live. >> the neighbors in the after working in the neighborhood, i think we realize çm share very similar concerns and most of the time all the same occurrence, that's safety in the neighborhood. this,3am1z÷ thesr5t main reason together to make the this is a dy are challenges that came across your table, what are some of the things you did to take on new

strategies? >> initially the goal was to get together and do thing in a positive way. some of the things we have done is we have gotten together an iybbq's. we organized days where people go to school and we hand them supplies they may need they are not gotting at school. we organized clean up days in the neighborhood where we got the city officials on board and supervisors and mayor's office to help us clean up the neighborhood. it's made people own their neighborhood and own their together to make the neighborhood a better place. >> if you want to learn what the lower haight is doing to turn it around and make it a great place for people to live, shop and live life. go to the website and click on the break out session video on how to make a neighborhood a better place to raise families. you will get all the great ideas

that come out of the police department and learn about how empowering yourself you will save a neighborhood. thank you very much frp coming out. >> thank you. daniel. >> this is daniel holesy. today we will have a break out session on community building we are at the ll hud center. cheryl, tell us about your y >> mo magic is a collaboration of service providers serving youth and families in the western edition. we meet to discuss what the issues and the challenges are for the neighborhood and the community and how the service providers can work together to meet those needs, plan events and activities for children, youth and their families. >> today's summit we will have a break out session in community building and the importance of having strong communities. tell us what people will hear when they hear the break out session. >> ways to build community and

engage the community in 2er78s of events and activities that pull folks out and build the trust so that people begin to believe in the idea of what the organization is. that's the foundation of how we get folks to come out and trust we are interested in what's best for the community. some of the things that come out will how to advertise, out reach and ensgaj and how to plan an event. >> that's important. some of the neighborhoods i know you work in it's hard to get people to walk outside their how the. even if there are a dozen people waiting to help them. wasn't there a dance you did this year? >> you know we did 2 dances one in the sprang and one in the summer. with a big shift in the summer where we had it be more family oriented. and we saw a difference in the behavior of what was happening at the dance much the first dance was youth focused and the second was definitely family. we had grandparents and great

grandparents and infants much it was a great atmosphere.ñtán÷on understanding community building and really involved the family and what you do plan something you need to think about who your population is and find a way to get everyone involved. >> thank you very much. mo magic is doing fantastic work. to learn more go to emour sf. org and click on the community building break out session today here at bill graham auditorium. be sure to visit the website. empower sf. org. >> hi. this is daniel homsey, today at the summit we will have a break out session on revitalizing your local park. i'm with the lower 27th neighborhood association. what is the role in the community?

for 8 yearsjrf revitalize the neighborhood on quality of life issues. we came in to the park, trying tomic it a safer and cleaner space. >> this park, what was this park like 5 years ago. what was it's impact on the neighborhood? >> 5 years ago the park was very different. there was a lot of homeless encampments in front of the park. it made it difficult for people to come into the park. there was a lot of drug dealing. it was a daeshg yarp. one of the other bipartisaning differences with the park now in the past trees in the parks, which everyone loved but it created a lot of dark spots and spaces for illegal activity to occur. >> i imagine to take a mod everyone approach looking at

make itting a safer place -- >> absolutely. by make itting safer people want to use it more. >> what are the things that set this park apart from all the parks in the city. what are the popular things the park has that people talk about? >> the most popular thing in the park is the fountain behind you. it come together by the murals you see around you. as you can see there is [inaudible]. there's [inaudible]. there's rivers in the murals so we try to put that into the design. we also have kept the [inaudible] who is a mythical snake who goes into the ground and come up. his head in the back. and the center there is a fountain that spouts up every couple minutes that kids play in in the summer. that's my favorite piece of the park and also the kids. >> if there is a play ground

like this in my neighborhood i would never leave it. you have done an amazing job. this is the most spectacular minipark in the worldlet alone san francisco. these are the type of parks people are looking for when they come to the summit. go to empower sf. org and click on the link, park break out session. learn more about how these ju)jt themselves to turn things around. >> we will go ahead and get started. can you hear me in the back? >> good. >> good morning and welcome to the community building break out session conference. my name is una and i'm the program director of san francisco safe.

san francisco safe is a nonprofit that has been serving the san francisco community since 1977. we build communities through crime prevention, and neighborhood watch. there's a lot of brochures if you want more information about neighborhood watch or san francisco safe i point you in that direction. i'm honored and excited to be the moderator on the session and be on the stage with the finest of san san francisco's community organizers. throughout process of putting together this workshop we realize we have a lot of things we share in common. one is a belief with more than one person a whole community can come together and build strength and power and make changes. that's the emphasis of everything we are doing today is trying to network and share

ideas and build ourselves into a more positive future. that's why we are here. i'm very glad to see you all have come to our session in the morning. i hope that through this workshop you will get the answers you have in terms of how to take that next step in terms of organizing your own neighborhoodses and learn from those who come before you to forge a way to improving the city which is something we all hold very dear. i wanted to say in terms of the to m format we are flexible. there is a general introduction as to who we are and who we serve and our experiences and the tools and strategies we identified to be successful. then we will open it up for you all to decide where you want it to go. we have question cards in the back i hope all of you grabbed.

through the question cards we can answer the questions you have. we don't know if come of you want to start a neighborhood watch group and want to know the first step in doing that. some of you may be have been doing that already and have questions. we want it as a discussion than us lecturing you on what we finds to be successful. that's the way the workshop is going to go. i will pass it along to our panelists to introduce themselves and talk about their organizations. thank you, again, for coming. [applause] >> hello i'm charl davis program direct for the mo magic which is western addition fillmore of adolescent growth in our communities. i'm a resident of the western addition and been doing work in

the community before this was organized. mo magic is part of the bay view mag i believing in the public defentders office it started in the bay view in 2004. last year supervisor mirkarimi liked the work that was doing done with be magic and wanted it expanded to the western edition. as of november of last year the program was organized. it seeks to bring community based organizations. cities and residents to talk about how to best serve the community and how we can work all together. we meet every other week in the western addition to discuss that. even though it's focused on the western addition we try to work with everyone in district 5. in serving the youth we have to work with their families and how the youth during and after

school hours affect the community and how we can work together to make things better for the youths and the neighborhood. >> welcome. i'm mark christianson vice president of the mersed extension triangle neighborhood. 280 to the east and south along with bright street e. we are fairly new organization. we were founded in 2000. so, we have been an association for 7 years. my background is i'm a third generation of san francisco. a teacher in the school district and cofound of met ma. we publish a news letter 4 times a year and have meetings 4 times

a year. we decide today's best not to meet too often if we meet too often we will water down our base. by meeting quarterly we get 35 and 75 beam to attend a neighborhood meeting. we represent 500 to 600 homes in our area. i have news letters later on, copies of news letters if you are interested to take with you and we will talk more about that later. >> good morning i'm judy best of my recollectionwits. bs fn issa a 35 year organization has 45 organizations as members. the members are not individuals but organizations. and each organization sends delegates to coalitions to san francisco neighborhood monthly meetings. we have a monthly news letter. many of our organizations

delegates sit on citizen advi adviceaadvic adviceary committees and active in the big over all, city wide issues in san francisco. one of the things we have completed is the water rates, which were threatening to be sky high for neighborhoods are now we didn't completely win the battle but we got them down to something decent. whenever there is something on channel 26 you will see someone from coalition from san francisco neighborhood testified in front of a board, commissioner committee. other things that we have done in the past, the housing elements. better neighborhoods planning the implementation. we actually were the genesis of

the sponsoring organizations for this meeting today. mayor's office of neighborhood services sprang from coalition from san francisco neighborhood presence at city hall and the neighborhood desk. thank you. >> hello my name is lela gill the president of the north panhandle neighborhood association. and there are a couple of other board members here i want to point them out. dan and jarry who are available to answer questions later. a little about north of panhandle, our neighborhood is north of the golden gate pan hanth bordered by masonic and turk streets. we have 3,000 residence denlts in our neighborhood. we adopt people outside of our neighborhood because we are very community based and try to

engage people that want to be part of our community. the neighborhood association was formed in 1991 in response to drug and violence activities that started. we have an montra, respect the neighborhoods the neighbors post in their windows. that was the start we have e involved since them. i will tell you about the tools we use in the next round of questions. i'm a working mother have 2 kids, 2 boys 2 and 6 year old. i also my husband is a social worker and worked in san francisco with inner city youths for a long time much the neighborhood association is -- our neighborhood association is a nonprofit organization. we are all volunteers. we all are work other full time. and so we do this on the side as

something we enjoy and hopes to build community. >> hi my name is carol mo. i'm a safety network program community organizer. i primarily work in the sunset my nonprofit is sunset beacon center. elharris is sitting back there. let me talk about the safety network program. safety network program is a city wide program. we have a community organizer based in each san francisco neighborhood. there are 4 main components of each organizer's work. one is to build community capacity. another is sometimes we act as advocates for your communities and we try to use community based strategies to improve

public safety and another roll we assume is we community to city departments to increase access to social services. i have brochures here if you want to learn more about the safety network program you can take a brochure. how my work relates to a neighborhood association is that a lot of times we would go to various neighborhood associations to try to collect community input on public safety issues and we would relate that back to mayor's office of criminal justice. some of the projects that are involved with that relates to community building is sunset community festival. fundraising campaign for the friends of sunset play ground. i kind of have my post on a lot of neighborhood groups and different projects and a lot of

times liaisons to different groups that's how i relate to neighborhood association. >> those of you that came in late i'm una i'm the program director for san francisco safe and here as a moderator today for this workshop. i want to get a sense in the audience how many of you are part of a neighborhood association or neighborhood group? wow! a lot of you are. how many of you are interested in starting a group in your neighborhood. >> wonderful. that's helpful. >> i will ask the panel a question about the tools and strategies they use. i encourage you to think about questions you have in terms of what you would like to hear from this group of exerts we brought together today and we will turn it over to you in a minute to answer your questions. >> for the panel. what tools and strategies do you use finsuring your community

remain vital and engaged with the communities you represent. >> having been a kindergarten teacher for several years i do a lot of projects and things based very event driven. since our organization began last november, we had several events that's way we keep everybody coming to the table. we are moving toward a goal and it's event driven for the most part. we have done several evenses such as a recognition dinner where we recognize students who were on time for school for a month. we had 250 students participate. we did a spring dance. because our community has issues with vip lens we create events that focus on the positive and gave people an opportunity to come together. the spring dance we had 200 opportunities and more than 50

adult volunteers from the merchants and neighborhood associations from the city all the different partners that are part of the collaborative. we did an art show and had again close to 200 people participate in that. youth show case at city hall where we had 300 students participate and their families come out. a field day with 300 students participate with their organizations. we did a black and white ball it was multigenerational and family oriented and we had over 200 children come with their families and grandparents and significant others. it was great to see the diversity in the room. we did 2 back pack give aways where we gave over threne00 back packs away. we focus on the event and everything else falls in lie because tea about community building in organizing the event we have to look at what the

event is and how it's relevant to the community and what's the purpose. why are we doing it and what we want to be accomplished. everything is project driven for us. >> with the mersed extension triangle neighborhood association we come out with a news letter quarterly. it's in the beginning of february, may, august and november. our meetings coincide 2 weeks after we meet on the second tuesday of those months. what we do is have an agenda that usually lasts 2 hours. we always have always invited the captain of the tar valpolice station. we try to have our supervisor supervisor elsbernd attend and he usual attends. we invite people from puc, dpt

and muni to come to our meetings to make presentations based on topics of interests that are currently projected. what we do we start off within the news letter we have several sections in the news letter. we have a safety issue section. we have a community watch section. and we have a lot -- one of the things we pride ourselves on is having a good relationship with the agencies in san francisco. we had over the first 7 years of our organization we had no less than 13 major projects in our neighborhood running from the creation of the head street stairs to a new sidewalk. we were able to get a grant through 3 agencies, bart, dpw as well as cal-trans to put a bridge sidewalks offer the bridge on saint charles. we have a sewer project coming

up in our neighborhood. we try to do projects and we have several projects on the board to continue. key is communication we communicate through our news all right we have meetings held and we are lucky. we have meeting hall anasm tlaert meeting hall the next is the 13th we have dues of 15 dollars a year. that's all. but we keep our meetings inclusive you don't have to be a member to come to the meeting. anybody from the public can come and we listen to everybody and everybody has a chance to speak much the key to our organization is keeping things positive and nonpolitical. we don't endorse candidates and don't support ballot measures if we do that we will divide the community people have various viewpoints on issues. we keep it open and listen to

everybody and are inclusive. >> coalition for san francisco neighborhoods has a slightly different tact because it's city wide. so -- we focus on the big ticket issues. most of the issues we deal with are planning, zoning, housing and various land use issues the most active is the land use committee. one of the things our members we focus on things that are committee brings to us and the neighborhood brings to us. many neighboring the market/octavia area brought us their concerns with proposed zone nothing market/octavia. we looked at this particular geographical area with a lot of detail and took on a lot of the

zoning issues that were included in market/octavia area plan. we folks us on issues if it's in your neighborhood it's usually going to somehow impact the rest of the city. we meet with the mayor on an irregular basis. if you are are a delegate or just a member of a member organization you can come to the personal meetings with the mayor. we also endorse ballot measures when they fall into certain categories. anything to do with neighborhood issues and there's -- anything to do with schools.