Lawrence Community Works, Inc.

Lawrence Community Works aims to meet the following objectives:
• Growing our network of residents who are engaged in building family and community assets, supporting each other, developing leadership skills, and engaging in collective action to advance an agenda for change;
• Partnering with families to build their assets through jobs skills, savings, and money management programs for adults, thereby building the asset base of Lawrence;
• Building housing, commercial space, and community areas for the benefit of families living in Lawrence;
• Expanding and developing our network of neighborhood leaders who have the capacity to identify issues, strategize solutions and work together for economic progress, a productive public realm, and city-wide policy change; and
• Providing a holistic youth development program that offers a wide range of hands-on creative and technical skill development, academic, leadership, and collective action activities.

By facilitating conversations and action on community priorities, LCW engages partners and a network of youth and adult residents in opportunities to move themselves and the city of Lawrence forward. We focus our work in four key areas: ♦ Asset Building to grow the local asset base and promote economic advancement and family stability for Lawrence’s low-income immigrant families. ♦ Network Organizing in order to connect people to each other and LCW programs, and build resident leadership and civic engagement skills. ♦ Movement City Youth Network offering programming for exploring the arts, academic support and career exploration, leadership development, entrepreneurship and community service opportunities. ♦ Real Estate Development an efforts for phyisical revitalization resident-led design processes, and development of affordable homeownership, rental housing, green space creation, commercial space and expansion of community facilities.

LCW had its beginnings in the early 1980s struggle to build affordable housing in North Lawrence, and has built or renovated over 400 units of affordable housing for the people of Lawrence. Since an organizational rebirth in July of 1999, we have become a powerful vehicle for community revitalization, attracting over $100 million dollars in local, regional, and national public and private investment and catalyzing collaborative, community-wide revitalization efforts.

In the past twenty years, LCW has: ♦ Grown our membership base from 0 to over 5,000 residents and stakeholders. Successfully completed 210 new units of affordable homeownership and rental housing for low-income families on formerly vacant, abandoned, tax-title, historic, and brownfields properties, with 5 more in pre-development and 20+ in the pipeline. These properties have won awards from HUD, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, and the National Community Development Association. ♦ Created Asset Building programs for over 1,000 adults annually, offering Individual Development Accounts, financial education and coaching, home-ownership education, foreclosure intervention, computer basics, ESOL, workforce training, leadership development. ♦ Launched Movement City, our evolved youth programs.