How we started

Nora Neighborhood Ambassadors came out of Faith Church’s Neighborhood Ambassadors initiative when we realized there were many other churches in our area working towards justice towards our marginalized neighbors.

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At Faith, we had been studying the story of Justice in the Bible with the theological Chet Wood. And we knew we needed to be doing something about what we learned. At the same time, many of us had been watching the decline of the apartments across the street through our relationships with our English students from FIEC (Faith International English Classes) and were discouraged by the conditions as well as maintenance request response time.

One of our attendees at Faith struggled with a management issue and a threat of eviction and we worked alongside him to get it resolved. Realizing that not everyone over at the apartments had advocates like Ron did, we began to get more involved.

We formed a group called Neighborhood Ambassadors (as we had just completed a building project with a similar name) in the summer of 2019 and began mobilizing. Soon realizing we needed to expand our base and that other area churches were both eager to get involved and many were already doing a good work, we formed Nora Neighborhood Ambassadors by June of 2020.

Our advocacy groups included Food, Housing, social services, and education. We had a google line through which residents could call us for help. Often maintenance requests evolved into social service needs so we found that a separate group to fill those needs would be helpful.

Also in the summer of 2020, because of COVID, the schools were closing for virtual school.

This was challenging for our new immigrant neighbors whose English had not yet fully developed. So the education advocacy group did a Friday virtual school support with Monday evening tutoring.

Housing had developed a rapport with management and was working towards resolve for tenants but the need was overwhelming so by January of 2021, we recommended to the city that tax exemption status be revoked and we met with government officials to discuss next steps.