Undertaking community renewal

The Atlanta Project (TAP), started in 1991, was created with the aim of bringing the local people and community agencies together and co-ordinating efforts to help Atlanta's poorest communities gain access to the resources they need to solve the problems that most concern them. TAP is organised around "clusters," some 20 neighbourhoods in which the greatest numbers of teen pregnancies, single parent families and people in poverty live. In each cluster local residents with experience in community service are employed by the project as "cluster-co-ordinators," who work with locally formed steering committees comprising residents, service providers and school, religious and business leaders who live in the cluster. Each committee has a specific focus: economic development, housing, health, education; bringing together a combination of volunteers and professionals. To date, the approach has succeeded in engendering hundreds of community projects within cluster areas, with the project now being promoted through the America Project as a model for other cities to copy.