Posted by:
Steve Dubb
Massachusetts groups establish Mel King Institute for Community Building
Since 2003, in the state of Massachusetts alone, community development corporations (CDCs) have help build or preserve 7,811 homes, created 11,609 job opportunities, supported 6,211 local businesses, served 123,556 families, and attracted $1.362 billion worth of investment to struggling neighborhoods, report Chuck Grigsby, former president of the Massachusetts Community Development Finance Corporation and Joe Kriesberg, president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC), the leading trade association for Massachusetts-based CDCs. Yet as Grigsby and Kriesberg note in a Boston Globe op-ed, CDCs today face new challenges. “Demographic, social, economic, technological, and political changes require new, innovative solutions that build on the lessons we have learned but break free from old orthodoxies and stale strategies. The successful CDCs of the future will be those that most effectively adapt and respond to these changes,” write Grigsby and Kriesberg. The Mel King Institute for Community Building, which Grigsby and Kriesberg helped create, represents an important effort to create the educational infrastructure necessary to meet these challenges.
The Mel King Institute for Community Building was formally launched on May 20th of this year, as this press release notes. The effort to create the Institute was a three-year process, with a “soft launch” taking place in 2008. The Institute aims to meet its mission of increasing the capacity of community development builders by sponsoring trainings, helping CDCs form partnerships, and providing technical assistance. The Institute’s budget, funded primarily through bank donations, is estimated to be $500,000 a year for the first two years. Key partners in developing the project, in addition to MACDC are two national CDC intermediary organizations, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and NeighborWorks America. An additional local partner is the Masschusetts Housing Partnership.
The Mel King Institute for Community Building is named for one of the founders of the community development movement in Massachusetts. In the 1960s and ‘70s, as a community activist, Mel King led the fight to stop a proposed interstate highway that would have destroyed several Boston neighborhoods. After stopping the highway, Mr. King was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1973 and served until 1982. During his tenure in the Legislature, Mr. King helped create the infrastructure that built the CDC movement in Massachusetts, including the Community Development Finance Corporation. In 1983, Mel King became the first African American to run for Mayor of Boston. Mr. King subsequently ran the Community Fellows Program at MIT for many years and established the South End Technology Center to provide youth with access to technology. Mr. King continues to work at the Center and remains an active voice for justice and opportunity.