What is a Community Development Corporation, and how could such an initiative help close the equity gap and remove economic barriers for all residents of Kent County?
That’s the question Chestertown residents with consulting experience, Rebecca Murphy, Rebecca Flores sought to answer with the formation of Upper Shore Community Development Partners, a new non-profit organization designed to be a “convening organization” to break down barriers to the underserved and revitalize struggling areas in the Shore communities.
At Monday night’s town council meeting, USCDP lead consultants Murphy, Flora, and Sam Shoge made their second appearance to clarify their mission and update the Council on recent accomplishments. Informational slides illustrated key points
Rebecca Murphy of RCM Strategic Consulting, and Rebecca Flora of ReMAKE Group, offer decades of experience in sustainable community development, non-profit organizations, and philanthropy. They are joined by former Chestertown councilmember and Kent County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sam Shoge.
Other board members include Sallie Findlay, Nina Fleegle, Norarene Hicks, and Dawson Hunter.
Flora says that one of the fundamental issues obstructing strategies to develop sustainable communities is the lack of precise demographic data. She says that none of the available data drilled down far enough to determine equity issues based on race and income.
With partial data available across varied platforms, an issue Shoge found frustrating when he researched Talbot County, the CDP team met with Eastern Shore Regional CIS Cooperative at Salisbury University. The Cooperative has developed the data resource Eastern Shore Index, a compilation of important information broken down by jobs, housing, transportation, largest industries in each county, and more. However, as good as the data sets are, the information still does not quantify race, a key component for the CDP team to determine the equity gap. However, the good news is that the Cooperative will be partnering with CDP to do just that. Other partners sharing the Index are Mid-Shore Regional Council, Tri-County Council for the Lower Eastern Shore, Rural Maryland Council, Rural Maryland Prosperity Investment Fund, and the Upper Shore Regional Council (pending).
“When we come to the Mayor and Council and say we have disparity issues, we have equity issues, we will actually have the data to back it up so its not just anecdotal we can point to a data source and point out the equity gap in housing, job placement, or entrepreneurship. This is one of the first things we will tackle,” Shoge says.
Further describing how CDP would work, Murphy sees the organization as a locus point and networking hub to pull together various county resources, non-profits, and private organizations to leverage those resources as a group to address equity issues, act as an intermediary between government and the community reduce inequality.
CDP points out that the three-year pandemic has had different impacts on the community. While it has exacerbated some, it has revealed others highlighting disparities. As the new organization moves ahead, they will also be looking for the Town’s partnership with support from the available ARPA funds. New guidelines for funding distribution state that “Eligible use include affordable housing, childcare, early learning services and making certain community development and neighborhood revitalization activities eligible for disproportionately impacted communities” to compliment private funding they have already received.
The group will return to the Council later in the month to highlight their request.
This video is approximately ten minutes in length. For more information about RCM Strategic Consulting go here. For more about ReMAKE group go here.
To see the complete slideshow, go to the following link.
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