National Advisory Board accepts challenge to change history
For release: Feb. 4, 2010
More than a dozen members of the National Advisory Board of Community Renewal International gathered today in Shreveport to help strengthen a model that can be used to build safer, more caring cities around the world.
“This is a great opportunity and a  great challenge to change history. This is something we should not miss,” said board member John Dalton, former Secretary of the Navy and president of the Housing Policy Council at the Financial Services Roundtable.
“The greatest heresy is to make small what God intends to be large – and I believe this is meant to be something large. If we want to be a part of something big, we can. But it won’t just happen.”
Dalton, who chairs the national fundraising campaign for the Center for Community Renewal, challenged fellow board members to expand their efforts to support and promote CRI. The group met in morning and afternoon sessions at CRI offices and at a Friendship House.
“The real magic of this is coming here and s eeing it and meeting the people. The beauty is the story in these neighborhoods,” said Charlie McBride, CEO of Charlie McBride Associates in Washington, D.C.
Others attending the meeting included Richard van Horn, former president of the University of Oklahoma; Bishop William B. Friend, former bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Shreveport; Nancy and Steve Walker, CEO of Middle Market Banking, West and Expansion States, for JP Morgan Chase Bank; Betty Pfefferbaum, chairman, department of psychiatry, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine; John Calhoun, founder of the National Crime Prevention Council; Don Beeler, former president and CEO of CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health Care in San Antonio, Texas; Paul Farmer, CEO of the American Planning Association; and Shreveport businessmen John D. Caruthers, his wife Jane Caruthers and Tommy Williams.
CRI Founder and Coordinator Mack McCarter reminded the board that we are here to bring together caring partners to make our world a home where every single child is safe and loved.
“If we do not lessen the number of suffering children, who does? We are committed to changing the world,” he said.
“We are coming together around our capacity to care for one another. We are taking the city back and we are doing it block by block.”
Board members met with CRI staff, brainstormed on ways to build the Community Renewal model and received updates on projects such as the Center for Community Renewal, which is in a design and development stage and will be housed in a building donated to CRI in downtown Shreveport.
“We want a platform to replicate this model of renewal. And we want our building to be a symbol of renewal,” said Harold Ledford, who is overseeing the project.
The benefits of community renewal and a new industry in social technology were also outlined during the meetings. They include creation of new jobs, savings in social services and public safety expenses, business revitalization and a healthier population, to name a few.,
“This is so vanguard and so wonderful for so many reasons. I can’t applaud this enough,” John Calhoun said.
Community Renewal International is a nonprofit effort to restore safe and healthy communities through caring relationships. Founded in 1994, Community Renewal reaches at-risk youth through Friendship Houses built in impoverished neighborhoods, strengthens education through the Adult Renewal Academy, partners with The Fuller Center for Housing and connects caring partners who turn their neighborhoods into safe havens of friendship and support.
Contact: David Westerfield, director of communications
(318) 425-3222
davidwesterfield@communityrenewal.us |
