city which is something we all hold very dear. i wanted to say in terms of the to m format we are flexible. there is a general introduction as to who we are and who we serve and our experiences and the tools and strategies we identified to be successful. then we will open it up for you all to decide where you want it to go. we have question cards in the back i hope all of you grabbed. through the question cards we can answer the questions you have. we don't know if come of you want to start a neighborhood watch group and want to know the first step in doing that. some of you may be have been doing that already and have questions. we want it as a discussion than us lecturing you on what we finds to be successful. that's the way the workshop is going to go. i will pass it along to our panelists to introduce themselves and talk about their organizations. thank you, again, for coming. [applause] >> hello i'm charl davis program direct for the mo magic which is western addition fillmore of adolescent growth in our communities. i'm a resident of the western addition and been doing work in the community before this was organized. mo magic is part of the bay view mag i believing in the public defentders office it started in the bay view in 2004. last year supervisor mirkarimi liked the work that was doing done with be magic and wanted it expanded to the western edition. as of november of last year the program was organized. it seeks to bring community based organizations. cities and residents to talk about how to best serve the community and how we can work all together. we meet every other week in the western addition to discuss that. even though it's focused on the western addition we try to work with everyone in district 5. in serving the youth we have to work with their families and how the youth during and after school hours affect the community and how we can work together to make things better for the youths and the neighborhood. >> welcome. i'm mark christianson vice president of the mersed extension triangle neighborhood. 280 to the east and south along with bright street e. we are fairly new organization. we were founded in 2000. so, we have been an association for 7 years. my background is i'm a third generation of san francisco. a teacher in the school district and cofound of met ma. we publish a news letter 4 times a year and have meetings 4 times a year. we decide today's best not to meet too often if we meet too often we will water down our base. by meeting quarterly we get 35 and 75 beam to attend a neighborhood meeting. we represent 500 to 600 homes in our area. i have news letters later on, copies of news letters if you are interested to take with you and we will talk more about that later. >> good morning i'm judy best of my recollectionwits. bs fn issa a 35 year organization has 45 organizations as members. the members are not individuals but organizations. and each organization sends delegates to coalitions to san francisco neighborhood monthly meetings. we have a monthly news letter. many of our organizations delegates sit on citizen advi adviceaadvic adviceary committees and active in the big over all, city wide issues in san francisco. one of the things we have completed is the water rates, which were threatening to be sky high for neighborhoods are now we didn't completely win the battle but we got them down to something decent. whenever there is something on channel 26 you will see someone from coalition from san francisco neighborhood testified in front of a board, commissioner committee. other things that we have done in the past, the housing elements. better neighborhoods planning the implementation. we actually were the genesis of the sponsoring organizations for this meeting today. mayor's office of neighborhood services sprang from coalition from san francisco neighborhood presence at city hall and the neighborhood desk. thank you. >> hello my name is lela gill the president of the north panhandle neighborhood association. and there are a couple of other board members here i want to point them out. dan and jarry who are available to answer questions later. a little about north of panhandle, our neighborhood is north of the golden gate pan hanth bordered by masonic and turk streets. we have 3,000 residence denlts in our neighborhood. we adopt people outside of our neighborhood because we are very community based and try to engage people that want to be part of our community. the neighborhood association was formed in 1991 in response to drug and violence activities that started. we have an montra, respect the neighborhoods the neighbors post in their windows. that was the start we have e involved since them. i will tell you about the tools we use in the next round of questions. i'm a working mother have 2 kids, 2 boys 2 and 6 year old. i also my husband is a social worker and worked in san francisco with inner city youths for a long time much the neighborhood association is -- our neighborhood association is a nonprofit organization. we are all volunteers. we all are work other full time. and so we do this on the side as something we enjoy and hopes to build community. >> hi my name is carol mo. i'm a safety network program community organizer. i primarily work in the sunset my nonprofit is sunset beacon center. elharris is sitting back there. let me talk about the safety network program. safety network program is a city wide program. we have a community organizer based in each san francisco neighborhood. there are 4 main components of each organizer's work. one is to build community capacity. another is sometimes we act as advocates for your communities and we try to use community based strategies to improve public safety and another roll we assume is we community to city departments to increase access to social services. i have brochures here if you want to learn more about the safety network program you can take a brochure. how my work relates to a neighborhood association is that a lot of times we would go to various neighborhood associations to try to collect community input on public safety issues and we would relate that back to mayor's office of criminal justice. some of the projects that are involved with that relates to community building is sunset community festival. fundraising campaign for the friends of sunset play ground. i kind of have my post on a lot of neighborhood groups and different projects and a lot of times liaisons to different groups that's how i relate to neighborhood association. >> those of you that came in late i'm una i'm the program director for san francisco safe and here as a moderator today for this workshop. i want to get a sense in the audience how many of you are part of a neighborhood association or neighborhood group? wow! a lot of you are. how many of you are interested in starting a group in your neighborhood. >> wonderful. that's helpful. >> i will ask the panel a question about the tools and strategies they use. i encourage you to think about questions you have in terms of what you would like to hear from this group of exerts we brought together today and we will turn it over to you in a minute to answer your questions. >> for the panel. what tools and strategies do you use finsuring your community remain vital and engaged with the communities you represent. >> having been a kindergarten teacher for several years i do a lot of projects and things based very event driven. since our organization began last november, we had several events that's way we keep everybody coming to the table. we are moving toward a goal and it's event driven for the most part. we have done several evenses such as a recognition dinner where we recognize students who were on time for school for a month. we had 250 students participate. we did a spring dance. because our community has issues with vip lens we create events that focus on the positive and gave people an opportunity to come together. the spring dance we had 200 opportunities and more than 50 adult volunteers from the merchants and neighborhood associations from the city all the different partners that are part of the collaborative. we did an art show and had again close to 200 people participate in that. youth show case at city hall where we had 300 students participate and their families come out. a field day with 300 students participate with their organizations. we did a black and white ball it was multigenerational and family oriented and we had over 200 children come with their families and grandparents and significant others. it was great to see the diversity in the room. we did 2 back pack give aways where we gave over threne00 back packs away. we focus on the event and everything else falls in lie because tea about community building in organizing the event we have to look at what the event is and how it's relevant to the community and what's the purpose. why are we doing it and what we want to be accomplished. everything is project driven for us. >> with the mersed extension triangle neighborhood association we come out with a news letter quarterly. it's in the beginning of february, may, august and november. our meetings coincide 2 weeks after we meet on the second tuesday of those months. what we do is have an agenda that usually lasts 2 hours. we always have always invited the captain of the tar valpolice station. we try to have our supervisor supervisor elsbernd attend and he usual attends. we invite people from puc, dpt and muni to come to our meetings to make presentations based on topics of interests that are currently projected. what we do we start off within the news letter we have several sections in the news letter. we have a safety issue section. we have a community watch section. and we have a lot -- one of the things we pride ourselves on is having a good relationship with the agencies in san francisco. we had over the first 7 years of our organization we had no less than 13 major projects in our neighborhood running from the creation of the head street stairs to a new sidewalk. we were able to get a grant through 3 agencies, bart, dpw as well as cal-trans to put a bridge sidewalks offer the bridge on saint charles. we have a sewer project coming up in our neighborhood. we try to do projects and we have several projects on the board to continue. key is communication we communicate through our news all right we have meetings held and we are lucky. we have meeting hall anasm tlaert meeting hall the next is the 13th we have dues of 15 dollars a year. that's all. but we keep our meetings inclusive you don't have to be a member to come to the meeting. anybody from the public can come and we listen to everybody and everybody has a chance to speak much the key to our organization is keeping things positive and nonpolitical. we don't endorse candidates and don't support ballot measures if we do that we will divide the community people have various viewpoints on issues. we keep it open and listen to everybody and are inclusive. >> coalition for san francisco neighborhoods has a slightly different tact because it's city wide. so -- we focus on the big ticket issues. most of the issues we deal with are planning, zoning, housing and various land use issues the most active is the land use committee. one of the things our members we focus on things that are committee brings to us and the neighborhood brings to us. many neighboring the market/octavia area brought us their concerns with proposed zone nothing market/octavia. we looked at this particular geographical area with a lot of detail and took on a lot of the zoning issues that were included in market/octavia area plan. we folks us on issues if it's in your neighborhood it's usually going to somehow impact the rest of the city. we meet with the mayor on an irregular basis. if you are are a delegate or just a member of a member organization you can come to the personal meetings with the mayor. we also endorse ballot measures when they fall into certain categories. anything to do with neighborhood issues and there's -- anything to do with schools. thank you. that's it. >> tools and strategies to engage your community. i want to pose a question to you. who is in your community. the first question you have to answer is who is in your community? think about that for a second because in our neighborhood we actually have an eclective group. we have residents, homeowners, renters. starving artists to starving studentses to corporate america to very rich people. we have a dynamic range of residents. we have a large merchant corridor on divisdaro and fulton. a lot of community organizations. we have a new mental health clinic and drug rehabs in our neighborhood. we have private and public schools. we have a dynamic it's a luxury and beautiful neighborhood because of the wide variety of people in the communality. my question to you is who is in your communality. you can start thinking through this session how you engage the people. what tools are you going to take out of this to engage that community? we as a neighborhood association have a lot of standard tools but i will connect it to how it relates to tresidentses. we have a news letter it's an 8 page news letter produced every other month. una is on the front cover because she is-ing us start a neighborhood watch program. our neighborhood -- i lived in my neighborhood for 20 years i never seen we have been plagued by violence i know is a city wide problem. we have as a result started a neighborhood watch program. we have over 30 blocks, that's a lot of bonni blairings starting neighborhood watch. thank god for safe and una because that organization is really helping us kick started. that's a great way to build communality. what's a neighborhood watch a block by block level not on a territory. you have to go get to know your neighbors. how many of you know your immediate neighbors or people that live 2 doors down from you. you would be surprised how many in your neighborhood don't. through a neighborhood watch program we are making neighbors get to meet each other it's a great way to build communality. our news letter we have a yahoo group over 600 people. we make it easy to join. we have a website where you type in your e mail address to the website and you sign yourself up. i don't have to sign you up you can do it quickly and easily through the website. we also just launched a wiky. how many of you guys know wik pedia? not that many of you. wiky is i'm excited about this tool. it's an imagine a website that everybody in your community could contribute to. that's a wiky. i welcome you to go to our wiky site it's nopnawi k i. org. jarry is our wiky manager he's the guy that sort of birthed it and has taken ownership. all of you could contribute. mo magic are in the western adition are the community convener they don't have a website we added their information to our website so people who are connected and want to look for tools or agencies that help them can get that information. so, pardon? >> the wiky the site is nopnawiki. org. we have the news letter and yahoo groups and website and wiky site. we fliers for all our meetings at our cafes and merchants. you can read about the events in the neighborhood. there is word of mouth that's the best way i think. talking to people is the best way to build communality. we do organize a lot of activities in our neighborhood. the reason why we are successful in organizing all the activities is we have a large shared leadership organization. all of us our volunteers and 11 board members we have over 60 volunteers in our neighborhood distributing on a parent's group or safety team. they are helping with marketing and pr. they are helping us with reaching out and setting up meetings with the mayor. we also set up meetings with the mayor and our city representatives. so, through those organization and volunteers and the committees we get a lot of community building everybody knows somebody else the classic network model. we do have meetings general meetings for the neighborhood and those are we communicate those meetings through the news letter through the yahoo group and fliers we generally get 70 people. the last had 160 meeting. the driver was because we had shootings in our neighborhood. the neighborhood association got a lot of big hitters to our meeting including the da's office and mayor's office and the police always come and park station is our police station and they are great. they care about us and communicate with us a lot. so, those are some of the few tools. we do things we have low income housing projects in our neighborhood as well. we have done family pot lucks events. until i got involved you don't realize how easy it is to do something to just organ event. create a flyer and set a date tell people about it. it's not that tough. we are doing you are all invited if you have kids. i just started a kids dance party at palang lounge. we are fortunate to have the new top 10 clubs in the neighborhood. we know the owner and pitched the idea of just letting the neighborhood invite the families and let the kids come and dance for 3 hours. noon-3 o'clock this sunday september ninth, tomorrow. that was something we came up with. we created a flyer and posted it. last party we had over 30 families there that was the first one this one we're xching a lot more people. we also organize holiday parties. we have a halloween party. kids are a great way to build community because everybody loves kids for the most part. you know, even the bad kids are good kids. we have our trouble spots but you know building community is about communication and as mark said, that's how you communicate with those people and that's i think the most effective tool is figuring out how to communicate and communicate. thank you. >> i want to piggyback on her point on kids. kid is a great way to bring families together. it's one of the most excellent way to bring diverse families together because children play with each other. and they go to the same school. the safety network and sunset neighborhood coalition we have worked together to prepare for the sunset community festival. one of the tools that we use is to try to make the event really run, really entertaining and try to make it culturally appropriate for the communality. one of the tools we use to try to make it appropriate is that in all of our fliers and out reach materials we try to translate all of them to the different languages that our community members use. and also we try to build relationships with our local media. i think that is one of the most effective way to let all of our community members know about our events. not only just english but media press with the local chinese narp or whatever language your community may need. thots one of the most effective way to get to community measures that may be more isolate the. and i think fundraising campaign is also a great way to build community because in our community, there are play grounds that are old and i'm sure there are play grounds in your community that are old and needs to be renovated. and i think play grounds is the way to bring people together because everyone wants their kid to play in a safe play ground. they want better facilities. it's a unifying goal that everybody wants. i think finding a unifying goal is important in community building. i think and then all of what the other panelists have said are very useful. >> thank you. >> we heard from our exerts a lot about the successes and the tools and strategies that they use to really engage their communities. a lot of us in the beginning raised our hands and said we were very actively engaged in the community already. it's a good time to talk about the challenges that come up. i'd love to hear from you in the audience what you see as