How to Start a Neighborhood Advocacy Group
Community action is a truly powerful thing when citizens work together to make social change. This collaboration can take place on a neighborhood level when people living next door to one another identify problems that affect their quality of life as a whole. People in a neighborhood can successfully solve problems by organizing into neighborhood advocacy groups and petitioning media, local government and businesses to help them in their endeavors.
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Instructions
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Identify an issue that is troubling you and your neighborhood. Go door to door, talk to your neighbors about the problem and determine whether the majority would like to find a solution. Invite those who seem interested to help you form a neighborhood advocacy group. Inquire about availability in order to plan a meeting time that allows for the maximum number of participants.
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Create flyers for your first neighborhood advocacy group meeting. Decide on a catchy name for the group and put it on the flyer. List the location, directions and time information about the first meeting. Post the flyers on telephone poles throughout your neighborhood, where legal, as well as in any community centers or other common areas that your neighborhood may have available. Put a flyer in each neighborhood mailbox the day before you have scheduled the meeting to take place.
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Approach your local authorities about the issue in an organized manner. Attend city council meetings with key group members and get in line to speak about your issue when appropriate. Appear unified, dignified, and singularly focused in the presence of city officials. Keep any conflicts between members of your neighborhood advocacy group to a minimum and keep them quiet.
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Follow up city council meeting appearances with a professional letter that someone from the group has written about the issue. Make sure your group has approved the letter in its entirety before submitting it to local officials. Visit your official city website and locate the mailing address for the Department of Community Affairs. Mail the letter to the address listed.
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Publicize your problem if city officials have taken no action after an acceptable amount of time, a month at the most. Contact your local television and radio stations and give them information about the issue, along with all of the steps that your neighborhood advocacy group has taken to try to correct it. Hold a vote at your next group meeting to elect someone to speak about the issue on the air if any of the news stations opt to run a story about the problem.
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References
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