Press Release
New Orleans, LA – The Belfer Center at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government is continuing its series of Neighborhood Leadership Forums this week in New Orleans to support and learn from leaders in recovering neighborhoods.
The current forum in the series, titled “Building Effective Partnerships: Increasing community-level resources and impact through cross-sector alliances,” will be held Saturday, April 5, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. at the Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel, 817 Common Street, New Orleans. The hands-on training workshop and forum will draw from a number of faculty and programs at Harvard Kennedy School, including the School’s Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative.
The forum series is an innovation of The Broadmoor Project, a collaboration begun in 2006 when Kennedy School students traveled to the New Orleans neighborhood of Broadmoor in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to assist residents in designing a strategy for neighborhood recovery. Since then, dozens of Harvard students, staff and faculty have worked alongside residents who have personified the vitality of their neighborhood by continuing to define its future.
The Broadmoor Project was initiated by Doug Ahlers, a New Orleans resident and a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and director of the Center’s Broadmoor project. “These forums aren’t meant to be dialogues or discussion,” said Ahlers. “These are hands-on sessions where people who need the information leave with ideas, skills, and resources they can use to implement real initiatives in their neighborhoods.”
Jane Nelson, director of the Harvard Kennedy School CSR Initiative, adds, “We see the April 5 forum as an opportunity not only to share lessons and good practices from elsewhere in the United States, but also to learn from the experiences of community leaders in New Orleans to develop tools and guidelines that can be shared more widely.”
Previous forums have included “Best Practices in Neighborhood Revitalization” and “Data Collection and Recovery Management Information Systems for Neighborhood Leaders” Generous financial support for the Neighborhood Leadership Forum series is provided by Shell Oil Company and Walter Shorenstein. Other sponsors include the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, all at Harvard Kennedy School; Bard College; the Broadmoor Improvement Association; and the Broadmoor Development Corporation.
Harvard Kennedy School volunteers and interns will continue work in Broadmoor. The School’s multi-year commitment to the Broadmoor Project has also included executive education and training for New Orleans residents at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA; the sponsoring of community forums in New Orleans; and the funding of research grants for Kennedy School faculty working on issues relevant to post-Katrina recovery.