ABCD (Asset Based Community Development)
ABCD is code for "Asset Based Community Development," which is a partnership between the Lodi Chamber of Commerce and the City of Lodi through volunteer mentors. It requires a few dedicated volunteers who help people change the trajectory of their lives for the better. Simply by coming alongside (not giving them a fish) but rather teaching them to fish. In doing so people grow and change through new knowledge, gained skills, new confidence, and belief in themself. They also find out there are people in their community who are dedicated to helping people, as well as their neighborhoods and community. Do you want to make a real difference in someone’s life and/or their neighborhood? ABCD is also how struggling neighborhoods change the things not wanted, into the things desired and often dreamt about.
It really isn’t new, just too rarely employed. Lodi Chamber learned of it in 2014 and incorporated it into its economic look forward titled VISION 2020. The celebrated endeavor identified five areas of great economic challenge and opportunity. One of the five was “Livability.” Seventy volunteer leaders from all sectors of the community stepped out of their individual work-sector silos and all got into the “Livability of Lodi” silo. As equals they asked, “How do we improve Lodi’s livability?” We learned in one Volunteer Action Team (VAT) that twenty percent of the population lived at or below the Poverty Line. Their neighborhoods were not safe to walk in at night, gangs peddled drugs and preyed on young kids, the area was in need of many things. For decades this part of town had been referred to as “The Eastside.”
Lodi is bifocaled by railroad tracks from north to south making a barrier and separating the east from the west. The Chamber group thought - let’s begin changing perceptions, and so we gave the eastside a new name, “The Heritage District.” Throughout most of the first half of the twentieth century, the town lived east of the tracks; to the west was farming. But the town started growing west with new and larger homes. Those people who prospered, on the east moved west. They kept their old home in east Lodi and rented them to field workers and laborers. The families who live in the west have their “family’s heritage” in east Lodi, where they began or grew up. The name recognizes those whose heritage started there, and those who live there today are making their heritage. It is a concept that unites us into ONE LODI, and ignores the separation created by the train tracks.
Below are a few of the many real stories, real people just like you helping residents of the heritage District do great things and making a difference in people’s lives!
What has changed? The City of Lodi’s Mayor offered some of his discretionary money to create small $500 grants for projects that helped beautify a home or homes on a city block in the Heritage District. Chamber member businesses donated items for the projects.
A life-long Heritage resident named Jim said he’d like to fix up his front yard and some minor improvements and he would show and tell others on his street about the Mayor’s Love Your Block program. After Jim’s neighbors saw what the improvement did for his front yard the same thing began to happen with or without the mayor’s grant. Today the street looks great and pride in their neighborhood has impacted other things like bringing neighbors together.
Saundra, another Heritage resident loves the performing arts and wanted to teach and excite young children with dances, celebrating their cultural heritage. Mothers and grandmothers sewed beautiful costumes for the girls. Saundra scripted a narrative about many cultures living together, realizing they are more alike than different, Saundra choreographed routines, put them to music, and the girls’ celebrated friendship, dancing together in their different cultural costumes. They performed in Heritage District Parks and Downtown at Lodi’s iconic Arch over Pine Street.
In a subsequent year, Saundra worked with younger girls. Some of the girls were only three to four feet in height. Saundra turned these little ones into a group of Monarch Butterflies in black leotards and orange and black gauzy wings twice the height of the girls. Saundra taught the girls some sweeping dance moves and had them flying gracefully for parents, grandparents, family members. The demand grew when people heard about the tiny troop. They performed at events in the Heritage District they embodied mutual love and acceptance in a racially mixed neighborhood. The group has marched and danced in big parades in Stockton and even Sacramento. In the audience at one of their many appearances, someone asked, “Where are these adorable girls from?” With a pride-filled response, someone answered “They are from Lodi’s Heritage District.”
There have been over twenty projects that have come from ABCD. Examples include Little Lending Libraries, Swimming Lesson days for families from grandfather to the youngest child. Biking enthusiasts from Bike Lodi held a free Bike Rodeo where kids could bring their bikes for a tune-up/fix-up. Ride through a cone course, win prizes, learn about bike safety, and every one child left with a new helmet.
ABCD… strives to help improve a life or lives of those young or old in the Heritage District? Check out ABCD for yourself, call 209-365-4604, and just say, “tell me more about ABCD,
I think I’d like to be involved in making a difference in people’s lives.”
What has changed? The City of Lodi’s Mayor offered some of his discretionary money to create small $500 grants for projects that helped beautify a home or homes on a city block in the Heritage District. Chamber member businesses donated items for the projects.
A life-long Heritage resident named Jim said he’d like to fix up his front yard and some minor improvements and he would show and tell others on his street about the Mayor’s Love Your Block program. After Jim’s neighbors saw what the improvement did for his front yard the same thing began to happen with or without the mayor’s grant. Today the street looks great and pride in their neighborhood has impacted other things like bringing neighbors together.
Saundra, another Heritage resident loves the performing arts and wanted to teach and excite young children with dances, celebrating their cultural heritage. Mothers and grandmothers sewed beautiful costumes for the girls. Saundra scripted a narrative about many cultures living together, realizing they are more alike than different, Saundra choreographed routines, put them to music, and the girls’ celebrated friendship, dancing together in their different cultural costumes. They performed in Heritage District Parks and Downtown at Lodi’s iconic Arch over Pine Street.
In a subsequent year, Saundra worked with younger girls. Some of the girls were only three to four feet in height. Saundra turned these little ones into a group of Monarch Butterflies in black leotards and orange and black gauzy wings twice the height of the girls. Saundra taught the girls some sweeping dance moves and had them flying gracefully for parents, grandparents, family members. The demand grew when people heard about the tiny troop. They performed at events in the Heritage District they embodied mutual love and acceptance in a racially mixed neighborhood. The group has marched and danced in big parades in Stockton and even Sacramento. In the audience at one of their many appearances, someone asked, “Where are these adorable girls from?” With a pride-filled response, someone answered “They are from Lodi’s Heritage District.”
There have been over twenty projects that have come from ABCD. Examples include Little Lending Libraries, Swimming Lesson days for families from grandfather to the youngest child. Biking enthusiasts from Bike Lodi held a free Bike Rodeo where kids could bring their bikes for a tune-up/fix-up. Ride through a cone course, win prizes, learn about bike safety, and every one child left with a new helmet.
ABCD… strives to help improve a life or lives of those young or old in the Heritage District? Check out ABCD for yourself, call 209-365-4604, and just say, “tell me more about ABCD,
I think I’d like to be involved in making a difference in people’s lives.”
