I'll see what I can do with that. Maybe I'll preface my answer by saying that when I first started doing this work, I was a manager out west in a municipal government. When I first came over to the not-for-profit sector, I actually said there's no way this neighbourhood work can do it. It's not scalable, there's not enough leverage, it doesn't have enough partnerships or pull. Now that I've been doing this work for nearly five years, I can tell you that I was wrong.
The successes have had quite an impact. Spryfield is a community of great strength. It also has some serious issues around crime. The way we looked at the work was that the United Way believes everyone has something to contribute and everyone can offer help. We believe in community.
We started doing the work by having lots of small meetings, getting people to come out, people just like you, Mike, to come on out. We'd say, if you've always wanted to do something, what would that be? Then we'd provide support to you to get it going. It could be emotional support or connections to other people, or maybe financial. Pretty soon you wind up getting a whole bunch of new connections in the community, things you wouldn't typically expect. Typically, we thought about things like collective kitchens for cooking or people coming together to clean up graffiti. That all occurred, but what was really interesting was that there were great connections made with the business commission. Residents wanted to improve the economic standing of the community and create more work opportunities, so they partnered with the business commission and did their own Spryfield business case.
There were a whole bunch of projects: a community garden that's still going on today and has now moved on to composting, graffiti programs that are sustainable. The residents and businesses got together, put money into a pot, and now they actually pull the money immediately out of the pot to address graffiti right away. So we've had some great success in Spryfield. Ninety per cent of that's attributed to the residents doing the work; we just provided the opportunity for them to get going.
You mentioned Dartmouth North. We're using very similar principles to what we used in Spryfield--we hire local, we are local, we do local work. We're doing that in Dartmouth North. It's the same thing; residents are coming forward. Typically these are people who have always wanted to do something but just needed that little extra to get going. There are three groups of youth who have come together--one to do a dance class together, one group to do computers, and one group to do youth afternoons. These all sound like individual programs, but what's significant is that all three are carrying on under their own initiative. All it took was a little bit of push and support by the United Way, and then they carry on.
These have a tremendous impact on local youth in the neighbourhood, from whom we hear time and time again, “You're never going to get me out, because it doesn't make a difference, and whatever you do is not going to help me in the long term.” I think the neighbourhood work is actually proving to them that there are lots of opportunities there.
I don't know if that answers your question, Mike.