Sarah Allen is busy. As community developer for Region 1 of the Department of Systems Management for Human Services, she is responsible for helping approximately 200,000 neighbors get to know one another and become more involved in their community.
"Community development is when people utilize their internal and external resources to strengthen their community in a number of ways," said Allen. "[They] identify their own issues and mobilize themselves to either fix the problem with their own resources or mobilize the county to assist them."
She said that her efforts are part of a 'paradigm shift' for the county's provision of human services. In addition to asking, "What can we do for you?" it now asks, "What can you do to strengthen [yourself]?"
Twice a year, Allen teaches the eight-week Neighborhood College, which she describes as a citizen academy, leadership development program. Participants meet local government leaders and learn how their government works, analyze their own communities and practice skills in organization and leadership that they can bring back to their communities.
Much of her work is focused on the Route 1 corridor. In Hybla Valley, Systems has helped the neighborhood establish a computer learning center, youth scholarships and a community day care center. It is also working with the police and housing departments, elementary and middle schools, property managers, non-profits and residents to catalogue and harness the resources of the community.
THE SACRAMENTO Neighborhood Center embodies the complexity of the community development approach. The center, founded more than six years ago, is located just off Route 1. Its sign blends with the storefronts of the Sacramento Shopping Center. Children, mainly black and Hispanic, stream through its cramped rooms.
The center is managed by United Community Ministries, under a contract with Systems, but almost all of the adults in Sacramento are volunteers from the neighborhood.
"The center is not a, quote, 'needs' center," explained Allen. "It's a center that says, 'Whatever asset you bring, how do you bring it in here?' Generally speaking, nothing is coming from the government to do it. It's all home-grown."
The services provided at the center - such as the RecQuest summer camp program (currently 34 children are enrolled though more than that show up each day) and Tae Kwon Do classes, to name two items off a monthly calendar on which at least five activities are listed for every day - are facilitated by neighborhood volunteers.
Providing these services to the community is the goal of the center, but for System's itself, these goals are simply a means to an end: creating a more participatory and cohesive neighborhood.
For instance, if the community decides it needs computer classes, Systems does not bring in a teacher, it encourages those who identified the need to find a teacher from within the ranks of their neighbors, or to lobby directly to the applicable county agency.
This approach has led to a plethora of classes and workshops at Sacramento, but it has also limited what the center can provide. There is a tension between the goals of the volunteers and the goals of Systems. The neighbors giving their time want to provide all the resources they can to their community. They take pride in creating much of this themselves, but there is a limit to what they can do.
SACRAMENTO is different from other community centers, which are managed and funded by the Department of Community and Recreation. Dwayne Sledge, a volunteer at Sacramento who has six children that use the center, said that many residents travel to the Gum Springs Community Center because it has resources like a weight-room and a kitchen. Sacramento does not.
"We need a lot more activities for the kids here," he said.
Entertaining the children is a strain for the volunteers. Some children stay in the center for nine or ten hours a day. There are no large rooms for them to play sports in, and only a busy shopping-center parking lot outside.
William Walker, a 16-year-old student at Mount Vernon High School, has been coming to Sacramento for five years. He wants to bring more teen-agers into the center but isn't sure how to attract them. "We're still trying to find something to do,"he said.
Sledge is also trying to bring in another under-represented group. He is trying to encourage men to mingle with one another and get more involved with Sacramento and their community. "We need the presence here," he explained. "A lot of fathers don't come. A lot of kids don't have fathers "We figured we'd give a sports night because men love sports."
Another volunteer, Terry Byrd, said the center has provided many area children a place to go. She said they used to hang out in the streets and get into trouble, especially in the summer when they were out of school. Now the children have a destination, but it has become too popular.
"We need more space," she said, a statement that would become a refrain.
THE VOLUNTEERS of Sacramento have high ambitions. In realizing those, they are straining their resources. "Now that we're growing we need that space to continue growing," Byrd said.
To the volunteers' relief, participation in summer camp has gone down this year. Last year, Charlene Saunders, a day care operator who volunteers about five hours a day at Sacramento during the summer, said it was difficult for the volunteers to cope with the hundreds of children that would show up for the camp.
"That was the year I thought about quitting,"Saunders said, "But I know I couldn't do that because I love those kids."
The volunteers were clearly frustrated by the lack of resources that prevented Sacramento from achieving its potential. Ultimately, Sacramento is funded by an agency of one of the richest counties in the country. But it is telling that the volunteers saw the constraints on Sacramento's growth as a product of the county, while the potential they were eager to realize sprang from their own efforts.
Sledge, a carpet cleaner by trade, said the county's contracted cleaner wasn't doing a thorough job. He volunteered to do the work himself if Systems would give him the equipment and supplies. Later in the conversation, he volunteered to get the walls painted in the same way. "Give us the materials and I'll do it," he said. "I'll have a paint night and I'll have all the mothers and fathers come out and we'll paint."
Despite the challenges Sacramento faces as the ambitions of its volunteers outpaces its infrastructure, the fact this ambition exists and is shared among a committed group of people suggests that Sacramento is fulfilling its function.
The neighbors' willingness to help themselves is even giving Systems itself some competition. Retired Social Worker Florence Foster has been volunteering two years at Sacramento. She was the coordinator with Fairfax County's Early Childhood Development Program, and still has connections in human services. She said neighborhood families that need help should make a visit to Sacramento, not a call to the Systems hotline, their first priority."t's easier when families come in here and get help," she said. "We can get things done quicker."