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ADULT EDUCATION IN MINNEAPOLIS The Riverside Plaza Resource Center is located on the ground floor of an apartment building at one entrance to Riverside Plaza. Adults and children pass the Center on their way to work, to school, and to nearby mosques. The bright colors of their traditional dress are a striking contrast against Riverside Plaza's stark 1970s-era concrete buildings. The Brian Coyle Community Center is just across the street. The Coyle Center has had a presence in the community for over fifty years, and is the predominant social service provider in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. The center offers a myriad of services for both adults and youth and hosts more than 40 community and cultural celebrations annually. Before the partnership began, both organizations offered separate, competing courses and services to the residents of the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. In 1999, the state legislature asked Minneapolis Public Schools to assume responsibility for the fiscal support of the adult education providers in the community. Carlye Peterson, manager of Minneapolis Adult Basic Education, brought the providers together to discuss a possible partnership. At the beginning, it wasn't easy to overcome long-standing turf issues between agencies as well as among individuals who had become active in the community. Over time, however, the partners saw the advantages of pooling resources and eliminating the duplication of services. Shared funding resources come from the state (the money for client contact hours goes into a fund for adult education services for the neighborhood), local funders, and private foundation grants. Partners seek funds both jointly and individually, and they keep in close contact to be sure they are coordinating their fund-raising efforts. The partnership was recently awarded Even Start and Community Technology Center grants. MPS ABE manages these grant funds and the contact hour funds. Besides financial support, Minneapolis Public Schools provides teachers for the Brian Coyle Center and professional development for all instructors who teach at Coyle and the Riverside Plaza Resource Center. While funding was the initial impetus for the collaboration, a shared commitment to the community keeps the partnership going. Partners have an equal say in determining program offerings, and they collaborate on the hiring of teachers. Now, instead of competing, the two centers coordinate courses and publicize them in a single course schedule. The partners' programs and services have expanded since the partnership began, and opportunities for other types of funding, such as grants, have increased. Partners report increased access to learners as well. Mike Melgaard, director of RPTA's Resource Center, organizes partner meetings and serves as the coordinator of the partnership. Partners meet at least quarterly and communicate regularly by e-mail. The partners say that the partnership works "because we're all headed in the same direction. We have the community in mind when we make decisions." They also note, "We're here to serve their needs, not to provide jobs for us." As Mike points out, "We're serving the hardest-to-serve communities in Minnesota. The learning curve has been tremendous. It's been enriching and challenging. We've had to rely on each other for help." Learners are recruited through the food bank and other support services available at the Brian Coyle Center and by word-of-mouth. Sometimes the partners present information about classes and services during community meetings. In the 2001-02 school year, 728 adults were enrolled in the programs for a total of 83,134 participation hours, a 100 percent increase over the first year of the partnership. In 2002-2003, 619 adults attended classes during 71,130 contact hours. The partners feel that this drop in participation may be due to changes in the state's "work-first" regulations lowering the level of English language abilities required for employment and to insufficient public funds for childcare. The Riverside Plaza Resource Center was founded as a project of the Riverside Plaza Tenants' Association in 1991. RPTA was established in 1988 as a member-based, nonprofit association to advocate for Riverside Plaza residents. Its goal is to bring services to where people live, and it does this by providing a place for education programs for children, youth, and adults, community gatherings, and other services that match the needs of residents. The owners of the housing complex contribute $150,000 yearly to support the operation of the Center. As a nonprofit, the Center can employ teachers with a wide variety of backgrounds and seeks teachers and other staff who are from the neighborhood or of East African descent. Currently, there are four full-time and twelve part-time instructors. Most of the classes are held in community rooms within the complex. Space is at a premium and, at times, classes must be rescheduled because the rooms are being used for other events. An AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer increases community involvement by recruiting community volunteers for the program. The Center has a computer lab that is used by RPTA and Coyle students during class hours and is open to the community after hours. Volunteers from nearby Augsburg College assist in the computer lab and serve as teaching assistants in the EL classes. The Center receives assistance from HUD, which supports "Neighborhood Networks" computer centers with guidance on program operation, budgeting, and recruiting volunteers (www.neighborhoodnetworks.org).1 The other provider in the partnership is the Brian Coyle Community Center. It is one of six neighborhood centers sponsored by Pillsbury United Communities, a nonprofit organization serving youth and adults in Minneapolis. It offers a variety of support services to the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, including:
Two Somali Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP)2 counselors are on site to help welfare recipients find employment. The Coyle Center also offers legal services to community residents and is home to one of the most well-known Somali organizations in the state, the Confederation of Somali Communities in Minnesota. The Family Opportunities for Living Collaboration, another member of the partnership, is a grassroots alliance of immigrant, refugee, and American-born individuals who work together to find solutions to neighborhood problems. It is led by FOLC coordinator Eileen Watson, an advisory council, and several work groups. The council is co-chaired by the Coyle Center's Rhonda Eastlund and includes Ann Ellison of Fairview University Medical Center, residents of the community, representatives of several East African organizations, and Trinity Lutheran Congregation. FOLC was founded in 2000 by a partnership among the Alliance of Early Childhood Professionals, Augsburg College, the Coyle Community Center, RPTA, the Confederation of Somali Communities of Minnesota, Cedar Riverside Children's Home Society, Fairview University Medical Center, and two local churches. Trinity Lutheran Congregation serves as its fiscal agent. FOLC began with funding from the West Bank Human Service Providers Council, an organization of neighborhood social service organizations, and has continued with support from private foundations and Hennepin County. But securing sufficient funding remains a challenge. In 2002, FOLC didn't have enough funds to pay staff, but managed to continue its operation through the generosity and commitment of the staff and advisory council, who volunteered their time. FOLC strives to include residents in every aspect of its operation and constantly seeks ways to involve them. FOLC was created in response to a comprehensive survey of residents' needs that was designed by immigrant and refugee leaders. FOLC staff said that they didn't even know what questions to ask to determine the needs of the community, so they went to the residents and asked them how to ask the right questions. They found that residents wanted to learn to speak and write English, find employment, participate in job training, secure childcare, and locate housing. In response, FOLC created six work groups to address these issues. The purpose of the work groups is to help residents adjust to life in America, Minneapolis, and the neighborhood. The groups focus on self-reliance, quality-of-life issues, children, youth and parent relationships, transportation, and health and wellness. RPTA, Brian Coyle Community Center, and Fairview University Medical Center, along with many other neighborhood organizations, are members of the work groups. According to a study of the challenges of being an immigrant in Minnesota, "Becoming fluent in English is arguably the single most important step that an immigrant can take if he or she wants to be successful in the US."3 One focus of the Self-Reliance work group is providing English literacy, GED, and computer instruction and job-skills training opportunities in the community. Another is "navigating and surviving in America." The Self-Reliance group recently created the New Neighbors Network, Cedar Riverside's own "Welcome Wagon." The goal of the Network is to orient new arrivals to the community, city and state services, and resources. RPTA estimates that eight to ten new families move to Riverside Plaza each month. With a small grant from the city, the Self-Reliance group developed an emergency contact card and a process for offering basic information about community life to each newcomer. The group enlisted volunteers from the partner organizations and the neighborhood to talk to new residents about health and safety issues. The volunteers meet with each new arrival to discuss emergency contacts, food storage and safety, home fire hazards, lead exposure, crime prevention, dressing for the Minnesota winter, pedestrian safety, cleaning techniques, nutrition, and immunizations. They also accompany newcomers to such neighborhood sites as the RPTA Resource Center, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the supermarket, the hospital, and the public library. The Network is designed to be a neighbor-helping-neighbor support group. As more residents acquire better English language skills, they will take over orienting new arrivals. Fairview University Medical Center is one of the largest and oldest organizations in the community and a Cedar Riverside Adult Education Collaborative partner. The hospital has been in the community for 100 years, carrying out its mission "to improve the health of the people in the communities we serve." Ann Ellison's job at Fairview is to see how the hospital's resources can best be used in the community and to bring the community's concerns to the hospital. To do this, Ann frequently attends community meetings, and it was at such a meeting that she heard about the adult education partnership's struggle to find classroom space. Not long ago, the owners of Riverside Plaza bought an old factory adjacent to the housing project. When Ann learned about the empty building, she thought it would make the perfect place for a community learning center. The hospital approached the owners of Cedar Riverside, who agreed and offered to provide the tools for the renovation. The hospital's management staff worked after work and on weekends to clear out trash and tear down interior walls. The hospital also enlisted the assistance of its vendors to begin the rebuilding. RPTA's Resource Center administrators and staff are working with an architect to develop a plan for the building. Tentative plans call for five to seven classrooms, a resource room, four offices, and a reception area. When the Resource Center staff talk about the project, their excitement is infectious. Soon they will have enough classroom space to accommodate all of the English literacy classes and can return the common rooms to the community. When the new center is complete, it will be dedicated to the memory of the victims and survivors of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. As part of Fairview University Medical Center's commitment to the neighborhood, it offers free health education classes at the Coyle Center. The classes address many of the health concerns of the community, such as navigating the American healthcare system, health insurance, diabetes, asthma, arthritis, communicable diseases, pre-natal care, and obstetrics. Participants who attend ten or more classes receive a participation certificate. The classes are new, but the hospital expects that 225 immigrants and refugees will attend this year. 1HUD created Neighborhood Networks in 1995 to encourage property owners to establish multiservice community learning centers in HUD properties. Neighborhood Networks help provide computer access to low-income housing communities. One goal of Neighborhood Networks is advancing literacy. (back to text) 2The Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) is the state's welfare program. (back to text) 3Immigration in Minnesota: Challenges and Opportunities, The League of Women Voters of Minneapolis, Minneapolis, MN, December 2002 (back to text) |
