Community Improvement Projects Boost Enthuasism

Last Updated: July 6, 2022

Check out the following community improvement projects. The first five below are built from submissions and stories from visitors to our site; you could contribute your own and be published on this site. As you can see, projects range from small to major large park cleanup and stream cleanup projects, which nonetheless could be spearheaded by one neighborhood.

Then we launch into four articles we the editors have written, the first one of which describes  community gardens, which are a doable project for almost every community. The other three take some real work and outside assistance to set up.

We suspect that many of you will want to see our longer list of projects implied on community development ideas page too. If you don't find anything that tickles your fancy here or on the ideas page, go over to the sitemap and use the yellow box near the top to find a different way of sorting pages on the site that many find to be really helpful.

Street Parties

Alley Clean Up

Derelict Property Clean Up

Large Park Clean Up

Stream Clean Up

Start a Community Garden

E-Waste Recycling

Bicycle Sharing

Beach Nourishment

Three Tips Applying to Almost All Community Improvement Projects

It surprises us how often people forget or ignore these simple truths.

1. Address something that enough people see as a need. Too many requests for help will generate volunteer burnout if there are only a few helpers who reliably participate in your community improvement projects. Many needs might not be obvious to most residents, especially if it is a social need or something that pertains to a hidden corner of the neighborhood or powerless part of the population. The test is whether people are eager to help when the issue is explained in just a sentence or two. If not, reframe the problem statement, move on to a different topic, or prepare to create change all by yourself. If you see something as a clear need, and your community does not respond, perhaps you need to create an educational campaign as a starting point.

You can safely violate this tip only when your community organization is so strong and vital that it can adopt more than one major project at a time. In that case, one or more initiatives that are less obvious to average community members can be undertaken.

2. Take the time to plan a community betterment course of action that is likely to lead to success. Wishful thinking is the enemy of accomplishment in neighborhood activity. For example, to want a grocery store does not make it viable to have one. While convenient places to buy healthy food is important to a community for many reasons, working toward an intermediate step will result in greater momentum and optimism within your community than stubbornly sticking to a goal that is unlikely to be attained. In this example, a farmer's market, mobile grocery truck, produce stand, or delivery service can be a much more practical goal than a full-service grocery store.

Organizations that are strong enough to mount more than one major project at a time can feel free to violate this rule of thumb, as long as their list of attainable goals is strong.

3. For one-time community improvement projects, usually you must only answer test 1 above. However, if the idea will require sustained effort, take the time to build a formal or informal organization, committee, or small group that will dedicate itself to the task. Usually your progress will not be linear,  which means making community progress in a straight line. People need enough passion to stay with you if you do not meet with immediate success and if things don't go exactly as planned.

If you don't have experiences to share with others yet, and you need more inspiration about possible projects, head over to our community development ideas page where we describe 19 potential projects.

Share Your Own Creativity in Finding Community Solutions

On this page, we introduce both community improvement projects that we recommend and descriptions of their own efforts from our website's visitors. Many who read our pages are deeply involved in community improvement projects. Some of you are consultants who want to tout a successful community betterment undertaking, and others are simply passionate about your particular success, hope, or instructive failure of a neighborhood, block, or citywide initiative.

Most of the stories of what works and what fails in community development are lost to others who are trying to address a similar issue or opportunity. A few stories are told over and over, but as wonderful as the Harlem Children's Zone may be, for example, the context in other cities makes it impossible for everyone to replicate one positive example.

That is why it would be so helpful for those who work in neighborhood organizations, block units, community development corporations, or in city planning, economic development, or sustainability consulting to get busy in giving us more case studies and short anecdotes about what is happening in community building around the world.

Learning is contagious. You do not have to be a brilliant writer or even know what conclusions to draw. In fact it would be helpful to others to tell your story in mid-stream because in community work, most sagas do not have a tidy beginning, middle, and end. Just relaying the history and facts as you know and see them will help other people.

On our home page we talked about how much fun community development and community improvement projects can be. That little note of optimism is important there, but it is equally true that working on your community can be frustrating, slow, and tedious.

Often it feels as though you take one step ahead and then some other problem pops up. It is a fortunate neighborhood indeed where there is only one subject that needs attention, and where people have both the will, legal permission and mechanisms, and the money to fix it promptly.  By the way, those fortunate few are most welcome to contribute here as well.

Commonly the cleanups and the special events to promote your town and your businesses need to continue on a periodic basis, with no end in sight. Learning how to plan and execute those events as smoothly as possible is an effective use of your time.

Among other things, creativity comes about when two disparate ideas come together, sparking something new for you. Below you will find a form where you can write about your community improvement project and even send us photos. If you submit something understandable at all, we will publish it as a separate page on our website. We hope that through your contributions, we actually add to the knowledge base about how to make community improvement projects ever more successful and interesting.

The pages that you can generate quickly and easily by telling us about your community development experiences will help others think about their own neighborhood issues more objectively, and you can enjoy bragging a little about your great crew.

Think how proud they will be to show up on the web. At least we hope so!

Use the form below to enter your thought or experience on community improvement projects. Thanks for helping out other neighborhood volunteers and even professionals who are having trouble coming up with a great idea.

1. Community Development
 >
2. Community Improvement Projects

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