466: Shannon McBride on Successful Community Collaboration.
Bringing residents, local government, and businesses together to build an epic garden and so much more.
Shannon grew up in the 19NORTH Community in Central Phoenix where she currently lives. In her career journey, she has held executive positions with Fortune 100 companies working in: Human Resources, Communications, Strategy Implementation and Training/Development. Her community work began as a Pastor at Open Door Fellowship Church where she founded 19NORTH – a non-profit community development organization that is bringing together schools, churches, neighborhoods, local government, city offices and businesses to help assure that, “Every Business Thrives, Every Student Succeeds and Every Neighborhood is Safe”.
In This Podcast:
The area Shannon McBride grew up in had experienced a tumultuous change when the Phoenix light rail was built right down the middle of it. Instead of allowing herself or her neighbors to get angry, she decided to build a collaboration for the area. Building around a vision for a safe, walkable community, she started with a community garden and through teamwork, donations, and community buy-in, the results are impressive. But she’s not done and there is so much more to this collaboration and this community. 19North is not your typical community garden by any means!
Listen in and learn about:
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- She grew up in the area she still lives in
- The light rail was built right through her community
- Reaching out to the local groups, 19North was born
- Starting the community garden as part of the new community collaboration
- Creating a vision for a their community
Vision: “A safe walk-able community for all to enjoy”
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- Developing the umbrella to work all their programs under
- Collaborating with the City of Phoenix to help get the community garden started
- Starting with a team – the garden development team – to create the garden vision
- Some of the key donations that have made the garden so amazing
- Taking Greg’s counsel as a challenge and making it happen in a year instead of three
- The workforce program created with the local high school to help students find good jobs
- A business alliance that walks the area and helps evaluate how to improve their area
- The crime prevention program developed around planning and working with city and police representatives
Mission “Every Business Thrives, Every Student Succeeds, and Every Neighborhood is Safe”.
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- A policy plan with city planning they are working on to help build their community and inform their representatives
- An art center that brings artists to the community with art classes, but is going to build into something more soon
- Some advice for the person who wants to create this in their own area
“Vision moves us” – Shannon McBride
As well as:
Her failure – She has started a lot of projects that have not worked, but she gives herself permission to fail so she can start over
Her success – Seeing her community represented in the projects and working together
Her drive – The joy of creating opportunity where community is experienced
Her advice – The greatest impact happens when turning a conversation from being mad, to finding a positive solution
Shannon’s Resource recommendations:
Find the resource already doing what you are doing and ask them lots of questions
How to reach Shannon:
Website: 19north.org
Facebook: @19 North
Email: shannon@19north.org
UrbanFarm.org/19north
Special thanks to our sponsors:gemplers.com/urbanfarm (use code URBANFARM01)
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