The Community Revitalization Collective (CRC) is an emerging cross-agency collaboration focused on the future wellness of the Whittier neighborhood in Sioux Falls SD.
The CRC will connect the dots for the neighbors and the city as a whole system. Understanding the Whittier neighborhood’s human and environmental ecology is essential to the program's success. Much of this year will focus on increasing collaboration and building a network between local agencies, nonprofits, and the City of Sioux Falls. This is to get an idea of the problems in the area and to generate potential projects to address the problems.
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2023
We:
Conducted monthly open forums for the neighborhood at various high pedestrian traffic locations.
Gathered door-to-door feedback from our neighborhood walks
Hosted quarterly potlucks or block parties to understand the neighbors further
Met weekly with CRC team to brainstorm, ideate, and prototype solutions.
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2024
We hope to:
We will continue with all year one activies
Build/Rebuild the neighborhood association.
Build out any infrastructure projects that come from ideation and prototyping.
Build active listening and feedback session into the neighborhood governance system.
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2025
We hope to:
We will continue with all year-one activities
Start the process of turning over our roles to those in the neighborhood
Fundraise so that the neighborhood association can facilitate our roles
Document and publish our system so that other neighborhoods can replicate the CRC
2023 Impact
(As of 7/7/23)
We are mid-2023 but have already seen a large impact.
4000 Tacos at 20 Citizen Tacos Feeding 2000+ People
5 Crosswalks and Bumpouts Added
6 Potlucks Engaging 50 People
4 Houses Painted
12 Trees and Shrubs Planted
5 Raised Beds
6 Mobile Planters
2022 Impact
We jump-started the project right after our first public forum in April of 2022. Here are some of the impacts following that.
1 Crosswalk Added
4 Public Forums
The mission of the Beverly Ann Miller Foundation and Institute of Civic Biodesign is to raise up emergent leaders who deploy whole-system, regenerative strategies through immersive learning in embedded community contexts.
The CRC team will build human and biocapacity in the neighborhood through the human-centered process of empathy, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing. They will partner with neighbors and surrounding agencies to alter the built environment using regenerative strategies to build wellness into the system. These builds could look like gardens, plazas, murals, community centers, and maker spaces.
Additionally, the CRC emergent leaders will identify and develop new neighborhood leaders so the area can lead from within.
This new batch of emergent leaders will be armed with a new whole-systems approach to solving hyper-local challenges. System change from within is critical for this region’s long-term success.
