Community Service
Trustee Profile
Paul L. Yelder, CdeP ’77 Building on the Spirit of Community hen first meeting Paul Yelder, CdeP ’77, it may not be completely evident that one is in the presence of a leader in community development. He is soft spoken and unassuming in demeanor, yet he has made a lasting impression on the lives of many people who have known him. I can attest to this from personal experience. The first time I met Paul in person he made me cry twice. First, he told me one of those strange, but true, Thacher coincidence stories about his first ever visit to Thacher for a family interview when his father, a World War II veteran, recognized Jack Huyler’s voice at the Thacher Admission Office after five minutes into the meeting, and more than 30 years after hearing it once in a chance encounter in Burma during the War. From that point on Mr. Yelder and Jack Huyler became good friends. Later in the conversation Paul described how for years he kept his office at Dudley Neighbors, Inc., in Roxbury (a neighborhood once known for urban blight), open on New Year’s Eve. The office computers, typewriters, and Paul’s editorial skills were all at the disposal of neighborhood high school students to complete their college applications. Those students have gone on to graduate from Amherst, Howard, Dartmouth (Paul’s alma mater), and University of Massachusetts, among other universities. This last anecdote is perhaps one of the simplest and best examples of Paul’s work in community development and how it benefits others.
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A History of Helping page 38
The Thacher News
Paul says, “Community development is anything having to do with building community,” so you could say he has been active in community development from childhood. His commitment to community development was nurtured early on, growing up in the Crenshaw/Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, where he learned the value of community and a sense of social responsibility. Paul attended Thacher gaining more experience with a different model of close-knit cohesive community. Thacher invested something else in Paul, “a sense of tremendous opportunity,” which informed his future direction and reinforced a nascent sense of responsibility to enable others to achieve their potential.
by Yasmin T. Tong, CdeP ’84
In a relatively short time Paul has had—and continues to have—a distinguished career in community development. After graduating from Thacher in 1977, he attended Dartmouth College, where he graduated with high distinction and received a Tucker Foundation Fellowship for a community service internship in Boston. He spent the next 16 years in Boston, where he pursued a Master of City and Regional Planning at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, focusing on real estate development, and housing and community development. After graduating from Harvard, Paul began working on neighborhood revitalization with non-profit development corporations, first to preserve historic housing, then for the Economic and Industrial Development Corporation in Boston, where he provided business consulting services to non-profit and for-profit businesses. He returned to affordable housing development at Roxbury MultiService Center, where he was responsible for managing an abandoned housing acquisition and rehabilitation program, and later went on to become the Executive Director of Dudley Neighbors Inc., a non-profit corporation that he helped found to manage the operation of a community land trust (C.L.T.). This C.L.T. was formed to purchase land in the Roxbury neighborhood and to facilitate the development of affordable housing through powers of eminent domain. This work is an important component of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, which is known as a national model of resident controlled neighborhood revitalization, and demonstrated the massive coordinated effort of local government, neighborhood-based non-profit organizations, foundations, and corporations needed to return economic opportunity and a sense of ownership among residents in a single neighborhood. This is the kind of work that requires one to operate in circles of influence, negotiating with banks and governmental agencies, and advocating among elected officials to obtain the resources and authority to change a neighborhood. This work also requires one to relate and respond to the neighborhood residents in a way that enables them to realize their power to make decisions about the destiny of their community. Paul is one of those rare individuals with the tenacity and ability to move comfortably among both groups and to achieve the desired results. In the seven years that Paul worked in Roxbury—what was a blighted neighborhood, ravaged by arson, crime, vandalism, and neglect—has become a vital community with new housing, youth programs,