8 minute read
Village Network turns voices into action in Battle Creek
from Ed. 578
Julie J. Riddle - New/Nueva Opinion
Battle Creek, MI - Everyone deserves to have their voice heard, according to the Village Network of Battle Creek.
The collective of nonprofits, faith-based organizations and small businesses serves under-resourced and marginalized minority Battle Creek communities. It exists because an equitable community requires two-way communication across all boundaries, according to Dr. Nakia Baylis, organization president and CEO.
When the network was coalescing a few years ago, leaders of local minority nonprofits and other service providers asked for a liaison. They needed someone to make sure those with the power to help them actually listened to them, Baylis says.
Now, the Village Network funds initiatives, plans events, goes to bat at the state level, and clears the way for others to take action, all with the end goal of allowing everyone an equal shot at participating in their economy.
The organization’s name reflects its intent to build communication networks ― not just uniting leaders of on-the-ground organizations, but also building bridges that give individuals access to systems, funders, legislators and decision makers.
“We want to serve as connectors,” Baylis says. “A connector of resources. A connector of support. A connector of people.”
Filling a gap
The Village sprouted from a W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Catalyzing Community Giving grant, meant to empower leaders within marginalized communities to promote impactful charitable giving.
The regional United Way, as the grant recipient, started asking minority communities in Battle Creek how they used philanthropic giving for community development. What they learned highlighted one glaring constant: Local groups’ most important needs weren’t being heard at the philanthropy level, says Baylis.
“They’re like, ‘We’re putting out fires while the systems are out on the lawn handing us teacups of water,’” she says.
Village Network aims to fill that communication gap by acting as a translator, helping leaders on the ground advocate for themselves and giving systems easy access to information that directs dollars to do the most good.
The network’s formation coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, Baylis says, the community had a different take on the needs of those with fewer advantages, and,
What the pandemic allowed folks to do was to say, ‘Oh, hold on a second. I’m starting to feel some things that other folks have been feeling for a long, long time.'
With a new perspective on what lack of access to food, safety, health care, and other needs looks like, the larger community was ready to get behind Village Network’s mission: “Turning our voices from simply speaking to action,” Baylis says.
Connections behind the scenes
While Village Network’s work takes on numerous forms, much of it is invisible to the general public.
The network was the force behind a recently formed BIPOC Battle Creek Endowment Collaborative to promote long-term sustainability for the participating nonprofits, kicking off the effort with a Dreamers Ball in January. Future collective fundraising efforts and resource sharing will ensure an ongoing revenue stream not dependent on grants or donors.
They worked with Kellogg Community College to include a community member on a hiring committee and helped bring $150,000 in new state appropriations for economic development projects to three local, minority-led organizations.
Recently, the City of Battle Creek contracted with the Network to lead visioning sessions regarding the planned redevelopment of two city properties. At the sessions ― “they were packed,” Baylis says ― the network encouraged residents who will be most impacted by the redevelopment projects to share their vision for those spaces. Developers invited by the network outlined their options to the residents in attendance, and city leaders explained zoning requirements and other parameters for the properties. Most of all, though, they listened.
With the door of communication opened, the developers could then write the neighborhood’s vision into their development plans before those plans went forward.
The supportive housing now slated for those properties will be built better because residents had an informed say in it ― and that’s the mission of Village Network, Baylis says.
Creating conditions for change
Nonprofits shouldn’t have to compete against each other for funds, Baylis says. The network builds platforms for collaboration so those groups can go after state and federal investment dollars together.
It also advocates at the state level when needed. Network leaders worked quickly to address a “language and communications” issue at the state level that could have shut down a local child care-related organization, impacting several hundred children, Baylis says.
When network leaders noticed residents were not comfortable going into educational spaces to reach their credentialing and certification goals, “We served as a liaison to say, ‘Hey, there’s a trust issue,’” she says. Now, with Village Network facilitation, accelerated training courses from Kellogg Community College and college preparation courses from Grand Valley State University reach minority residents via the youth-support nonprofit New Level Sports Ministries.
A recent Village Network project aims to identify what keeps marginalized and disenfranchised business owners from crossing sustainable profit thresholds. Baylis sees those entrepreneurs giving up or leaving town, “and that’s a deficit to our communities,” she says.
The network funded a study investigating the problem in a pilot launched last fall. Insights gleaned from the study are already having an impact. For example, learning that minority entrepreneurs often begin businesses less prepared than their peers, nonprofit lender Northern Initiatives is leaning into a capital readiness program. “Fantastic. This is exactly what we need,” Baylis says. “We need to make sure that, before we start at point A, we need to start at point little-A, right?”
Self-advocates and systems changers
While Baylis focuses most of her work on creating the conditions for systems to work equitably with marginalized communities, “I spend 98% of my time working with people so they can be positioned to work with systems for themselves,” says Dr. L.E. Johnson, Village Network vice president for inclusion and engagement.
He works with individuals, organizations, and groups (“Collaboratives are my sweet spot,” he says) to increase the capacity for individuals who have been hyper-marginalized and traditionally disenfranchised “to become self-advocates and system changers themselves.”
Through events like the “World’s Biggest Rice Table,” at which about 100 people sampled and discussed rice dishes from around the world, Johnson sparks thoughtful conversation about differences, similarities, and an individual’s place in their community. “We looked at it as our humanity,” Johnson says of the event. “It’s all rice.”
Too often, large systems look to leaders of nonprofits as sources of information, not as partners, he says. When governments, for example, decide to accomplish something, they hire a consultant, hold a few meetings, and then do what they want to do.
“In our community engagement, we say, ‘No, that’s not it.’” Johnson says. “You can’t just come, get a little information, and move forward.’”
The network creates an even playing field by making sure on-the-ground organizations understand government jargon and policy speak. It keeps grassroots leaders abreast of what’s going on at higher levels and prepares them to walk into city planning meetings and feel on par with everyone else. It helps underrepresented communities communicate their own opinion of potential changes, and makes sure those opinions get heard ― “and then we support them in using their leadership to work in partnership with government to get things done,” Johnson says.
‘Everybody can participate’
When people know how to navigate systems and advocate for themselves and feel they have the right to do so, “Now we have the community that has the muscles and the skill and the knowledge and the know-how to work with those systems,” Johnson says. “Now we have the conditions to advance something.”
The Village Network only serves Battle Creek, but its leadership hopes to replicate its work in other communities and build a statewide version, as well.
Of course, its presence in Battle Creek doesn’t mean everyone else can just sit back and watch, Baylis says. Communities dedicated to equitable development “need to support an economy that everybody can participate and prosper in.”
“And make spaces for other voices,” Johnson adds. He dreams of a community where everyone gets to have an equal say ― a community where everyone, he says, gets to feel “that I belong here. That my voice matters. That this can’t happen without my voice.”
This story is part of Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative’s dedicated coverage of equitable community development. SWMJC is a group of 12 regional organizations dedicated to strengthening local journalism. Visit swmichjournalism.com to learn more.
