If your neighborhood had $1,000, what would you create? Love Your Block Phoenix wants to know the answer.
Beginning this fall, Love Your Block Phoenix will invite community groups to apply for a $1,000 mini-grant to transform their neighborhoods. Love Your Block Phoenix is a mini-grant program funded by Cities of Service to support resident-driven improvement projects in lower-income neighborhoods. Projects may include community gardens, neighborhood cleanups, tree planting, community murals, and graffiti removal.
Helen Stoddard, left, and Hayley Steele are two full-time AmeriCorps VISTA members who will be working for the next three years with the Cities of Service project, bringing mini grants to Phoenix low-income neighborhoods to help with improvement projects (submitted photo).
Cities of Service is a national nonprofit organization that works with cities to launch and build city-led, resident-driven programs that target the needs of communities. In order to boost these efforts, Cities of Service has brought on two dedicated full-time AmeriCorps VISTA members for the first three years of the Love Your Block Phoenix program. AmeriCorps VISTA members are national service members who serve in U.S. communities to fight poverty, similar to the Peace Corps. This first year AmeriCorps VISTA members are Helen Stoddard and Hayley Steele.
Steele attended St. Mary’s High School and graduated from Northern Arizona University, where she received a B.S. in criminology and criminal justice, and political science. Stoddard graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a B.F.A. in photography.
Love Your Block is funded by Cities of Service, Corporation for National and Community Service, and the city of Phoenix.
Visit www.phoenix.gov/volunteer for more information about Love Your Block Phoenix and to see if your neighborhood falls within the initiative boundary area.
