Love Your City

Program Overview

Teams go door-to-door at first, meeting residents and introducing themselves as a faith-based non-profit organization called Boy With a Ball that helps youth and families reach their dreams. The teams then acknowledge that they are brand new in the neighborhood and that the community members are experts before asking the residents their thoughts on whether young people in the area need any help and details about their situation. Responses are logged into BWAB's online evaluation database. The BWAB groups also ask community members for their friendship as they turn to begin launching activities to help the neighborhood. Week after week, these small teams work to get to know more and more residents and then to pass by and engage conversations to better know those they have already met. Within the first year, team members and volunteers become aware of community members facing significant challenges or opportunities. These community members are then matched up with either a team member, volunteer or another member of the community to provide a mentoring relationship that can help them navigate the situation. Additionally, as a growing number of community members are known and being mentored, individuals facing similar situations are identified and then drawn into formal small groups that lead to life-changing behavior change including: Women's groups, Men's groups, Young Women's groups, Young Men's groups, tutoring centers, ESL groups, job skills training groups, GED classes and more. Within three to five years, as weekly community walkthroughs, mentoring relationships and small groups grow, emerging leaders within the community are identified and then set into a leaders' group to take responsibility for the entire program, allowing the program to scale into additional neighboring communities. Volunteers are recruited from local universities, churches and, as the work progresses, within the community itself.

Cost Info

Student and Volunteer Success Stories