The Vision
The vision is to help families achieve real self-sufficiency and to improve the social and economic vitality of families in low-income neighborhoods.
On August 18-20, 2004, teams from three Casey Making Connections sites in Atlanta, Georgia; Louisville, Kentucky; and Oakland, California participated in a peer technical assistance match with staff and partners of the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation in San Diego, California. The visiting Casey sites are all at different stages of developing economic revitalization plans and are particularly interested in assuring that residents play a leadership role in their efforts. The purpose: to exchange information, experience, and ideas about community ownership in neighborhood revitalization projects.
The journey that led to the Market Creek story began with the Jacobs Family Foundation's realization in the early 1990s that the structure an tools of foundations were not helping to change the sense of dependency and disrespect in underinvested communities, nor were they contributing to sustainable change.