RVA Thrives | How we Started
It all started when…
Since 2017, VACV has successfully listened to and engaged more than 1000 neighbors in historically marginalized communities along Richmond Highway in South Richmond through a program called RVA Thrives. This community engagement process started with listening. RVA Thrives asked neighbors: “What would it look like and take for your community to thrive?”
VACV hired Community Advocates -- people who live on the Southside -- to conduct listening processes to better understand their neighbors’ lived experience and vision for the future of their community. Community Advocates conducted 100 one-to-one conversations, 50 recorded interviews, and collected 700+ surveys from corridor neighbors to better understand their lived experience and neighbors’ vision for the future of their community.
Eleven issues rose to the top. In early 2018, a committee of local leaders from 11 neighborhoods formed the RVA Thrives Steering Committee to scope those issues and start crafting solutions to three priorities: neighborhood beautification, safety, and jobs access.
Today, the RVA Thrives Steering Committee continues to meet monthly to lift up issues facing their neighborhoods and prioritize issues for collective action. VACV is developing a Leaders Fellowship for adults and youth, to prepare more local leaders to be agents of positive change. And we are starting to build the foundation for a healing hub, called the South Richmond Center for Well-Being, which will be a
VACV leverages funding to implement the solutions neighbors design. Over the years this has included youth-led participatory research projects on evictions, arts and civic advocacy projects for youth, neighbor-led community clean up days, an equitable development scorecard to combat gentrification and community-rooted greening plan to mitigate the impacts of extreme heat on the Southside.
