Community Renewal
takes ideas internationally

Editorial
June 23, 2008
The (Shreveport) Times

World leaders will learn about a Shreveport project in September, when Community Renewal International pitches its cause to the Clinton Global Initiative.

Community Renewal founder Mack McCarter will be one of a few project leaders who meet with heads of state, business executives and scholars, invited by former President Bill Clinton. The hope is that McCarter returns with multiple commitments of financial support to build the organization locally and replicate its model elsewhere.

McCarter talks about Community Renewal not as a program but as a new paradigm, and it's exciting to see his idea receive this kind of attention. Plus, it's encouraging that the long-awaited National Center for Community Renewal - to be located in the Petroleum Tower - might get some funding to become a reality.

The key to making Community Renewal's model of development a success on a national level though, still comes back home. It must be successful as Shreveport-Bossier Community Renewal.

McCarter founded the organization in 1994 with the basic principle that relationships can heal society's ills and create healthy communities. Then he created a three-pronged system for building those relationships: We Care teams made up of people committed to the idea of looking out for their neighbors; Haven House leaders, who look out for their block; and Friendship Houses, which serve as community centers.

Currently, there are 39,000 members of the We Care team, 900 Haven Houses and eight Friendship Houses in the area's most challenging neighborhoods.

The organization is now developing a five-year plan to make Shreveport a demonstration of how this model can work. By the end of the plan, McCarter wants to see 125,000 people counted as We Care members, 5,000 Haven Houses and 60 Friendship Houses.

"We will be the first American city that is concretely connected together," McCarter said.

He expects it to be a model that cities around the world could study and replicate. The National Center would house interested community activists and provide that training. So far 33 cities have already started some form of Community Renewal.

Accountability will be important as they grow locally and internationally, and McCarter has struggled to quantify their progress, although he said he recently has hired a couple of analysts to put some numbers to their efforts.

Community Renewal does have plenty of anecdotal evidence his programs are making a difference.

Cabs will now venture into Barksdale Annex in Bossier City, where they were once afraid of violence. Trash has disappeared from the streets of Allendale. Adults are receiving their GEDs after training in Cedar Grove. And in Highland, the community coordinator has a hard time finding space big enough for periodic parent nights.

McCarter's excitement and vision can be on one hand contagious and on the other hard to wrap your mind around.

But we agree with McCarter's frequent assessment that 95 percent of Shreveport-Bossier City residents are caring, giving people. We hope that Community Renewal International can mobilize those people to change Shreveport-Bossier City as well as cities around the world.