Community Engagement

Habitat for Humanity of Orange County is a nonprofit organization that helps families build and improve places to call home. Habitat believes affordable housing plays a critical role in strong and stable communities. Habitat for Humanity partners with people in communities all over the world to help them build or improve a place they can call home. The CPL has a longstanding partnership with Habitat in support of its efforts to better engage community members, support community-led initiatives, meet community needs, and facilitate interconnected communities. Each academic year, the CPL and Habitat partner to advance specific community engagement goals. Sayoko Kawabata, CPL Community Engagement Fellow, is the lead CPL staff member for these projects.

Neighborhood Engagement in Orange County
2022-2024 Academic Years

In August 2022, Habitat and the CPL began working to develop a concrete neighborhood engagement strategy to implement across Orange County neighborhoods. This approach is being developed using the Habitat for Humanity International Framework for Neighborhood Revitalization, which focuses on building sense of community, social cohesion, and collective action. The CPL is working directly with Habitat staff and community consultants to develop organizational infrastructure and concrete strategies to effectively partner with communities where Habitat is building across Orange County. The neighborhood engagement strategy will help Habitat asses its current resources and impact and identify areas for Habitat to better support Orange County communities’ quality of life and meaningful engagement.

Neighborhood Engagement Approach

During the 2022-2023 academic year, the CPL developed a neighborhood engagement strategic plan for Habitat for Humanity Orange County.

To mobilize an effective neighborhood engagement strategy, the CPL identified four specific areas for action: 1) Increasing Habitat capacity for neighborhood engagement, 2) Facilitating communication among Habitat and community, 3) Cultivating cohesion among diverse communities, and 4) reinforcing community leadership and decision-making actions.

The CPL then detailed specific components to address Habitat’s neighborhood engagement strategy, including:

• Resident Leadership: Organization and support of local resident leadership groups; development of a resident leadership coalition
• Staff Capacity: Hiring neighborhood engagement team manager, neighborhood engagement coordinators, and community advocacy specialists
• Competencies and Training: Holistic and critical approach to neighborhood engagement that is rooted in strengths-based approaches, antiracism, cultural responsiveness, and resident leadership
• Neighborhood Engagement Activities: Overarching trajectory for how staff will engage with communities as well as specific tailored approaches based on foundational outcomes of community quality of life
• Evaluation: Development of specific evaluation methods throughout the neighborhood engagement process that will reveal both formative and summative outcomes for Habitat’s neighborhood engagement process

The CPL will continue to work with Habitat in the 2023-2024 academic year to enact this neighborhood engagement approach.

Oral Histories & Strategic Plan in Fairview
2021-2022 Academic Year

This collaboration among Habitat, the CPL, and the Fairview Community Watch produced an action plan for Fairview’s new community center and its programming. This project is supported by an oral history project to understand and preserve the rich history of Fairview, highlighting how it has built a strong and thriving community that is looking to the future. This project informs the community center strategic plan as well as offers context and guidance to future community initiatives.

Fairview, a historically African American neighborhood in Hillsborough, NC, was first recognized by the Town of Hillsborough in 1952. The Fairview Community Watch (FCW) was formed in the early 1990s to advocate for a safer, healthier, fairer, and more enjoyable Fairview. FCW is comprised of an active group of resident leaders involved in many community-building efforts in the neighborhood. The organization leads neighborhood safety initiatives, supports a community garden, and sponsors many programs and internships for local youth. In addition to these events, FCW has also advocated for the restoration and development of the Fairview Park and the establishment of a police substation and community space, which was opened in 2002.

Histories and Future Visions of Fairview: Oral Histories

The Histories and Future Visions of Fairview project in the Fairview community in Hillsborough, North Carolina started in collaboration between the Fairview Community Watch (FCW), Habitat for Humanity, and the Community Practice Lab (CPL). We also collaborate with UNC Food Fitness Opportunity Research Collaborative (FFORC), who has been working in Fairview mainly with the community garden. The goal of collecting oral histories is not only to capture and preserve the rich history of the Fairview community, but also to inform community engagement, programs, and activities. After building community relationships over the course of the fall of 2021, the CPL team began collecting oral histories in Fairview in February of 2022. Key narrators were identified in collaboration with FCW and include residents who speak English or Spanish.

This project was further supported and expanded by both a graduate and undergraduate student grant from the Southern Oral History Program of UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South.

A community event in April 2023 showcased the oral histories collected, and the team is in the process of archiving the oral histories to be available to the public.

Our team contributes an occupational science perspective to this project, highlighting how we can understand and mobilize everyday living of people in their context. Oral histories offer a rich opportunity to examine how everyday lives in Fairview have unfolded in the past and present, exploring how the community has developed and lived together. The stories and experiences passed on through oral histories will spotlight the vibrant life of Fairview while also offering nuance in the challenges it has faced over the years. This perspective will be immensely helpful in informing the development of a new community center in the neighborhood that can support participation, intercultural engagement, health-oriented activities, and community cohesion.

“Vitalize”: Community Center Strategic Plan

In 2002, the city of Hillsborough, NC built a dual-purpose building in Fairview meant to function as a police substation and a community center. However, over the years, residents found the building somewhat inaccessible, so its use as a community center declined. After nearly 20 years of advocacy, the police substation has now been designated a full-time community center. The FCW renamed the building to the Dorothy N. Johnson Community Center after the late Mrs. Dorothy Johnson, a strong advocate of the community. The CPL partnered with the FCW, informed by oral histories collected and community input, to develop a strategic plan for this center titled “Vitalize.” This plan outlines a way forward in relation to programming and renovation to enhance community participation and engagement that results in a “a safer, healthier, fairer, and more enjoyable place to live.”

Past Projects

Throughout its longstanding partnerships with local community organizations, the CPL has supported the creation, implementation, and evaluation of some projects that continue without our active involvement.