sto rox

In August 2015, Coro kicked off our first year of partnership with “Sto Rox,” a community of nearly 1300 residents including the township of Stowe and borough of McKees Rocks. The long-term goal of our engagement is to help build leadership capacity in the community and to provide Coro leaders-in-training with a proving ground to apply their learning.

 

In this first year, Coro Fellows are learning skills in assessing community leadership capacity. They are interviewing dozens of community leaders, and have posted an online survey for residents, in Stowe and McKees Rocks to learn more about where the most promising initiatives are occurring to strengthen the community but also to understand barriers that stand in the way of further progress. In May 2016 Fellows will deliver a report to the community that will address these topics and identify the next generation of leaders in the community who Coro will invite to participate in our NEXT Neighborhood Leaders program beginning in the fall of 2016.

 

In addition to the leadership assessment group project, Coro Fellow Cameron Hunter is working with the McKees Rocks CDC, Focus on Renewal, and various other community organizations to build the Youth Partnership. Cameron is advancing work that was begun by Coro Fellow Ryann Tanap who launched the Youth Partnership in the spring of 2015. The Partnership formed after local youth organizations collectively decided that more needed to be done to facilitate collaboration among youth-oriented organizations and to thereby strengthen the voice of youth in the future of Sto Rox.

 

Fellows are engaging in various other activities to strengthen their ties to Sto Rox. On October 24th, they participated in Clean-Up Day in partnership with students from the University of Pittsburgh. On November 18th, they attended Jingle Bell Rocks to celebrate lower Chartier’s Avenue’s emerging downtown district. And on several occasions they have conducted multiple “neighborhood walks” to meet residents.

 

The Coro Fellows are helping to build a strong foundation for future engagement of Coro in Sto Rox. Coro’s next steps are to launch NEXT Neighborhood Leaders in Fall 2016 to begin building leadership capacity among residents. Check out our blog for updates.