Love Your Block – Jackson, TN mini-grant and small home repair applications now available for download
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JACKSON, Tenn. – Love Your Block – Jackson, TN mini-grant and small home repair applications are now available for download and pick up.
“We are thrilled to finally announce the opening of the application process of our mini-grants and small home repairs,” said LYBJacksonTN Fellow Jameson Colbert. “We look forward to reading all of the submissions for this program.”
In 2021, the City of Jackson was selected by Cities of Service as one of eight cities in the US to receive the Love Your Block grant. Love Your Block Jackson is a 2-year mini-grant program that supports resident-driven improvement projects in the Midtown, Downtown, and East Jackson neighborhoods, with an exclusive focus on the East Jackson neighborhood during the program’s first year.
"Our Love Your Block team has been working tirelessly since last winter to get to this point," said Mayor Scott Conger. "I'm extremely proud of their progress. I truly believe that East Jackson will benefit in a major way with this initiative."
Mini-grants will provide funding for projects that can help revitalize and remediate blighted properties and spaces within the neighborhood to improve the quality of life in East Jackson. Community groups and individuals are eligible to apply for up to $1,500 to fund projects that will revitalize and beautify the East Jackson neighborhood. All project proposals within these parameters will be reviewed, with priority given to projects that repurpose and reactivate vacant lots.
Applications can found by selecting the “Love Your Block Applications” link at http://jacksontn.gov/residents/loveyourblock or by stopping by the front desk of Jackson City Hall at 101 E. Main St., Jackson, TN 38301. The deadline to submit application with supporting documents is May 9, 2022.
About Cities of Service
Cities of Service helps mayors build stronger cities by changing the way local government and residents work together. We help our coalition cities tap into resident insights, skills, and service to identify and solve critical public problems. Founded in 2009 by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Cities of Service supports a coalition of more than 280 cities, representing more than 84 million people across the Americas and Europe. Now situated at Johns Hopkins University, you can learn more about Cities of Service at citiesofservice.jhu.edu and by following us on Twitter @citiesofservice.
Since its founding, Cities of Service has helped cities implement change through the use of its Impact Volunteering strategy. This signature strategy engages resident volunteers to identify and solve pressing public problems alongside municipal government. It is a participatory process in which residents and city officials develop a shared vision, set short- and long-term goals for their community, and then work together to achieve those goals. As partners, they communicate throughout the process and reflect on their work – discussing and evaluating what they have done and holding themselves accountable for results.
About Love Your Block
The Cities of Service Love Your Block program brings city leaders and residents together to build stronger neighborhoods, one block at a time. Typically, cities implementing Love Your Block invite community groups to identify priority projects and award mini-grants to support neighborhood-driven solutions that the community can implement. From turning vacant lots into community gardens to helping elderly neighbors with home repairs to avoid fines and safely age in place, resident volunteers are “loving their blocks'' and making them, and their cities, better places to live.
The benefits of Love Your Block go well beyond physical improvements. A 2021 Urban Institute study found that social networks sparked by deep resident-to-city-hall engagement can instigate neighborhood-level improvements in addition to larger, sustainable improvements to municipal practices and policies. Love Your Block activates and builds social networks between residents, their neighbors, and city hall. This resident-to-city hall engagement can lead to collective efficacy that is often bidirectional: city officials can leverage neighborhood social capital in service of mayoral goals and residents can leverage greater responsiveness from officials to address their needs and priorities. In other words, Love Your Block is a starting point for cities to more meaningfully engage their residents and improve communities in holistic and sustainable ways.