Richmond Brings Home Top Honor
June 19, 1999

For the third time in three years, a Richmond neighborhood organization has won top honors at a national conference for efforts made by residents to improve the quality of life in their communities.

The North & East Neighborhood Council will be honored Tuesday by the Richmond City Council for receiving a "Neighborhood of Year" award recently from Neighborhoods USA ((NUSA) at a conference in Phoenix attended by more than 1,000 neighborhood activists from all over the United States. There were 50 entrants competing for awards in three categories. The local group won first prize in the single neighborhood social revitalization area for launching a successful campaign to discourage random gunfire on New Year's Eve.

"We are incredibly gratified to be recognized by a national organization that works with neighborhoods all across the country," says Sandi Genser-Maack, President of the North & East Neighborhood Council. "We won because so many residents, merchants and city officials got behind the campaign. It was a true collaboration."

The neighborhood Council recruited dozens of residents to go door -to-door last December in the area surrounding City Hall, which the Council represents, with window signs that encouraged a safe and quiet New Years's Eve. Merchants displayed the signs, a local company donated a billboard carrying the message and the Richmond Police Department helped spread the word. As a result, Genser-Maack says it was quieter this New Year's than it had been in more than a decade.

Genser-Maack says her group's effort to develop and launch the "Starting Y-2K Out Right, No Shooting on New Year's Eve" effort should be just the beginning of a long-term prevention effort that the City of Richmond has made a commitment to continue citywide. She hopes it will continue to focus on developing strategies for changing community values and raising awareness about the dangers of using random gunfire as a way to celebrate.

According to Genser-Maack, NUSA is a national organization which was founded to encourage neighborhood activists to develop creative solutions to community problems. Winning projects in Richmond in the previous two years include two projects in the Richmond Annex, the Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council's arts ,mini-grant program and Point Richmond's Bucket Brigade effort.