One of the most exciting community development projects to surface in the San Francisco Bay Area is the new SparkPoint Center.  I’ll admit that I may be a little bit biased since the organization that I work for is one of the founding partners.

Let me give you a little background on my organization, East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC).  EBALDC is an affordable housing developer in Oakland, California that not only builds and manages housing and community facilities, but also provides economic development programs for the community at large.  For the last ten years, we have been offering Individual Development Account programs to help low-income families and individuals buy their first homes, start businesses and go to college.  In addition, we have one of the largest volunteer income tax assistance sites in Oakland, bringing over $1.5 million in tax refunds back to the community over the last six years .

But with the unprecedented economic challenges of the last couple of years, challenges that have severely impacted Oakland’s low-income communities of color, we knew more needed to be done.  And the opportunity to do something more came in the invitation to participate in the new SparkPoint Center.  The SparkPoint Center is an innovative financial center concept that is being spearheaded by the United Way of the Bay Area.  Last summer, United Way approached EBALDC and four other Oakland community based organizations to develop the concept of bringing together financial programs that help low-income families to increase their income, manage their debt and build their assets – all in one center. Additional partners include the City of Oakland through its Bank on Oakland program, an effort to link unbanked city residents into the mainstream banking system.  All of the organizations immediately took to the idea because we saw the immense benefits of being able to offer families free income tax assistance, job training, academic counseling, small business training, matched savings accounts, mainstream banking options, financial education and coaching, credit counseling and foreclosure assistance all under one roof.

The SparkPoint Center is also taking a different approach in how we work with the people who will walk through our doors.  They are not going to be treated in the way that so many of them are used to – as case numbers, clients or even customers.  Instead they will enter SparkPoint as members who are empowered to set and achieve their own financial goals. We like to make the analogy of SparkPoint as kind of like a fitness club.  Members can get financial coaching and other services at the SparkPoint Center in order to achieve their own self-determined financial fitness goals.

There is much to be done as we ready to open our doors next week (Monday, March 30). And we are just in the pilot or “learning” phase. We have made our plans, but the months ahead are where the rubber really hits the road.  It is community development in action.

Official National CAPACD Blogger, Charise Fong, is the Director of Neighborhood Economic Development at EBALDC.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.