SV@Home continues to bring together over 15 Santa Clara County-based nonprofit organizations — now known as the Community Roots Collaborative (CRC) — to learn more about community development and make it a reality in our region.

The last time we wrote about the CRC, we shared our inspiring experience touring the Chinatown Community Development Center. Recently, we got back together again for a film screening in late June. 

SV@Home hosted a film screening at our office with the cohort to view Gaining Ground: Building Community on Dudley Street, a sequel to a 1996 award-winning documentary, Holding Ground. Gaining Ground highlights the resilience of a new generation of leaders navigating foreclosures, unemployment, and childhood poverty during the Great Recession in a predominantly Black, Latinx, and Cape Verde Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood. Thanks to a 25-year legacy of deep-rooted organizing tradition of residents, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) transformed a disinvested, blighted area with a history of redlining into a community filled with affordable housing, parks, playgrounds, community centers, and more. DSNI used real estate solutions by leveraging community-led development through a Community Land Trust (CLT), known as the Dudley Neighbors Inc. 

The CRC cohort participants expressed feeling moved by the film. Some were inspired to mobilize and figure out a work plan to support community development in our region with the support of the CRC cohort. Other members, who are CLTs themselves or are transitioning into a Community Development Corporation, expressed their dedication to sharing their lessons with the group and further creating a community of learning.

SV@Home is excited about the future of the new Community Roots Collaborative program and how this cohort will further help move the needle to fill the void of much-needed community development in Santa Clara County. SV@Home will be organizing monthly CRC convenings through October, with a tour of the Black Cultural Zone in Oakland in September. Stay tuned for more updates!