Historic Manheim Park is a diverse urban, community located in central Kansas City. The community has experienced decline over the past four decades but within the past few years, has begun to experience a notable renewal. To continue this momentum, our community was awarded a $20,000 grant by a Kansas City-based organization, the Community Capital Fund to help us organize our community into block teams, sponsor community clean-up and other events such as community gardens. With the grant we also want to capture the talents present in our community so that we can begin to leverage them to further develop our community.
Organizing our community into block teams will require us to map the 36 six blocks of our community into four teams, identifying block representatives, train the block team leaders on effective ways for engaging members of our community, and sponsor block events that engages members of the entire block team (e.g., community clean-up, meet your neighbor events, block beautification projects). To complete the asset mapping portion of the project, we will be working with Dr. Jake Wagner from our local University of Missouri at Kansas City, Department of Architecture and Planning. Dr. Wagner will develop the asset mapping instrument, train volunteers, walk the entire neighborhood to collect data, analyze data and work with neighborhood leaders to create a comprehensive “asset catalog.” Our asset catalog will contain information about members of the community who have special skills such as home repair, computer repair, landscaping, etc.
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