Neighboring Podcast

As a father of three young kids that wants to do all that I can to develop them into well rounded, loving, generous, brave and a million other adjectives, this is one of the most relevant conversations I can have. Parenting is hard, developing your children is harder, and trying to live a balanced life that includes the things that bring you joy without abandoning your family is the hardest. This podcast with Jason is a great illustration of a parent doing his best to be able to do all of these in unison.

Jason started getting involved with NeighborLink through our Team NeighborLink efforts by riding bikes with us and eventually picking up a cycling kit. We usually don’t get to know many of our TNL athletes kids unless the kid is a bit older and also active in the sport, or if they family travels to races with us. So, it’s rare to meet the younger kids for a lot of logistical and kid watching reasons. When someone does incorporate their kids regularly, it’s noticeable and that was the case with Jason and his daughter. Get to know Jason and you realize that doing these kinds of things together has been woven into their lives since the beginning and it’s normal. And, it’s great to see them share these experiences and have a mutual level of desire to participate. This is a practice that I experienced as a kid with my dad and one that my wife and I embrace with our kids. I’ve got so much to learn from Jason and his daughter as well.

Jason has his own website and YouTube channel, Adventure Widely. Check it out if you’re interested in learning from them as they explore.

This is an important conversation as part of Neighboring because it relates to all aspects of parent/kid/activity. It brings light to the barriers in our lives that keep us from pursuing the adventures or the experiences that we know will shape our kids into the people we hope they become. Developing our kids starts early and has to be modeled by us as parents.

We get asked all the time at NeighborLink whether we allow children to volunteer with us. The answer is always as big of YES as I can express. NL will never ask you to take on a project that you aren’t confident that you can accomplish on your own, and if you’re choosing the project you do and want to incorporate your kids, then you’ll choose a project right for them as well. Even if you go out as a family with toddlers knowing full well that all the work responsibilities may fall on dad, being present together in a service context is the right thing. Play with your kids in the front yard, talk to the person you’re helping, walk the neighborhood you’re in, and know that presence is as powerful as the activity.

By the time my kids get to teenage years or older, I hope they have a broader worldview than I had at that age. I hope they are more compassionate, courageous, and gracious towards the diversities they’ll experience. I realize that it will only happen if my wife and I embrace that for ourselves right now and take them along for the journey as we work that out. If we wait until they’re older, easier, or have better attitudes towards the discomfort that is part of the journey, then we’ll have an even harder time getting started than we do now.

Jason’s stories inspire me to keep taking my kids with me. Jason's daughter is pushing past her fears, growing as a person, and gaining confidence along the way. And, it sounds like they are having a blast along the way. What’s better than that?

While I know that embracing this may compromise achieving my own personal pursuits or cut into some much needed personal time, I think it’s worth it. I would rather ride bikes with my kids or take on smaller volunteer projects than not be able to do it with them. I see this playing out with parents that are have kids getting older and I know if I’m patient, soon enough my kids will be on a similar level and ready to blast past me. I think it gets really fun then.

I have the greatest co-workers and couldn’t imaging not having these two guys working with all our volunteers and overseeing the projects at NeighborLink. Jeff and I have been doing NL projects and leading volunteers together for 13+ years as we both got started doing NL work as volunteers at our church. I became the director in 2008 and as soon as I could hire someone to join me, I hired Jeff. Jeff is the definition of a servant leader and has lead his way through some really difficult projects at NL. From countless hoarding projects, urgent moving projects due to evictions, ice waterfalls inside homes due to burst pipes, bugs, and so many more.

Derrick joined the NL staff a little over two years ago after over a year of volunteering weekly with us. He volunteered his way into a part-time job and then into a just short of full-time job leading aspects of our operations. Derrick is the guy you want to be on your projects due to his charisma, wealth of experiences, and his positive attitude that no issue can’t be overcome. Extremely important characteristics required to stay committed to loving your neighbors through challenging circumstances.

In what I hope becomes a regular series about what you can expect to experience as a volunteer (or, intentional neighbor as I prefer) at NeighborLink, or as a committed volunteer wherever you spend your time, we’re starting to share our experiences as volunteers and staff members in an effort to help you either know what you may experience or to stand in solidarity with those that have had tough experiences.

Two things are true: One, you’re going to have a difficult projects with in the first 3-5 NL projects. Two, there is no way you can do it alone and expect to stay committed once you hit a few tough projects. They’re overwhelming and without preparation and community to process with, the burden proves to be too much. We have too many volunteers that have gone solo, stayed solo, and then burned out due to their experiences.

If this resonates at all with you, then I think you’ll really enjoy this podcast as Jeff and I recount one of the very first challenging projects we worked on together, and several that have impacted Derrick along the way. We’re much more seasoned now and have plenty of experiences where we didn’t feel that it went all that well to inform how we do things now that prompt our suggestions on how to address them if you find yourself there.

Final thought: WE DON’T HAVE THIS ALL FIGURED OUT! And, we don’t imagine that we ever will because transformation is constant and you “never arrive.” What we have done is develop boldness and courage to engage relationally with our neighbors that have invited us to be a solution to their problems. We’ve learned that the right solution isn’t always what they’ve asked for, which we know instinctually when we meet them, but it takes time to work together to find that solution. So, be bold, ask questions, and feel empowered to get to know neighbors in order to make sure what you have to offer is the right thing and will be appreciated for the long haul.

Part 5 of a 5-part series where we interview the five neighborhoods that NeighborLink has invited to part of a 2019 comprehensive research project. Our desire is to learn what makes a healthy neighborhood healthy. These five Fort Wayne neighborhoods have been chosen for their unique socio-economics, demographics, geographic influences and levels of neighbor engagement at the association level.

Mark, Laurie, and Randy joined NeighborLink for an insightful conversation about the Pettit Rudisill Neighborhood. Laurie was born and raised in the same home that her and her husband, Randy, have been living in since 1986, which gives tremendous insight into how the neighborhood has changed and stayed the same over the past handful of decades. Mark and his wife migrated to Fort Wayne over 20 years ago and as they got involved in a southside church. Over a couple of years, they continued to move south to their current home that they purchased 17 years ago.

Pettit Rudisill is the neighborhood I know the least about and the one I’m most excited to learn about because I think it’s a perfect example of a neighborhood that has definitely been impacted by socio-economic factors beginning in the last 60s, but maintains it’s strong neighbor-to-neighbor connectivity and health. I drive through it almost every day as I either drop off or pick up my kids from school and travel down it’s main corridor. We do a lot of NeighborLink projects in that neighborhood each year and meet some incredible, long-term neighbors there. Rudisill is one of the main east west corridors on the south side, and it is quite the boulevard with bigger homes, wide streets and mature trees covering the landscape.

Laurie shares with us that the neighborhood started to change demographically and racially in the late 60’s as more African Americans began to buy homes and realtors began to scare many white homeowners out of the neighborhood with fear that their property values would suffer. Laurie’s family stayed put, raised their families, and proved that the neighborhood was just fine with an increase in diversity. Pettit Rudisill may have always been the side of Rudisill Boulevard that was represented by the blue-collar working class that made up so much of International Harvester and GE’s workforce, but it was and still is a great neighborhood for families looking for affordable, solid housing.

Mark, Laurie, and Randy all share that yes, there are some challenges in the neighborhood, the media often portrays the SE side of town as a collective problem and that not all neighborhoods have problems. Mark shares about how vibrant and full of young life the neighborhood is and how his family has grown up benefiting from the neighborhood. “People are people,” Mark shares, which is so true. Everyone is trying to do their best with what they have and search for a quality of life that meets their desires. We all want to be known, loved, cared for, and part of something.

Pettit Rudisill is a solid neighborhood with great neighbors. I hope this project helps share the bright sides of PR and the SE side of Fort Wayne to begin changing the narrative that our community believes about the southside. PR talks about the increased investment of outside groups, new neighbors, and a major infrastructure project that the City of Fort Wayne is going to start this summer. With a huge increase in housing activity just to bit further to the west on the same street, I can imagine PR is going to be on the come up really soon.

We’re looking forward to our next phase of the 2019 research project, which includes a two-hour workshop with neighbors from each of the five neighborhoods: North Highlands, Williams Woodland, West Central, Hoagland Masterson and Petite Rudisill.

I’ve been pitched retirement since I was in college. It usually starts with me being asked to think about what I want to be able to do with my free time when I get there, how much money would I like to have in the bank, and and the type of lifestyle I want to have. The sales pitch usually includes being able to play golf, travel the world, and be able to afford the house that I always wanted. Not all financial planners are pitching that story, but we can agree that sort of narrative dominates. While I do believe being prepared for that phase of life is responsible, the way it has always been pitched just never settled with me. It simply seems to lack any sort of purpose other than leisure and I find leisure pretty boring. But, I’m only in my late 30s and a lot can change and I certainly have a lot to learn before I ever get to that point.

What’s is encouraging me regarding that discussion is how NeighborLink has benefited greatly from men and women who enter retirement with intention and purpose with a desire to use their time, abilities, and resources to help other neighbors through their life’s circumstances in tangible ways. For nearly 10 years, NeighborLink has had small communities of retirees, folks between jobs, or those under-employed with free time who intentionally organize by getting together weekly to take on projects that find our website. Each year, 300+ tangible home repair projects get completed because of a collective group of around 40-50 people throughout the year through three different groups currently. What they’re able to do, and what they choose to do, is absolutely incredible. So, I ask a lot of questions about their lives, their careers, how they get connected to NL, and what their motivations are when they could be doing anything other than helping.

I sat down with Mark Schmidt on this episode of Neighboring to discuss his personal journey. We take time to talk about how he navigated his 30 year career at one company, how he did or didn’t manage work/life balance, his family, the role faith plays in his life, and how he’s chosen to retire early from a professional career after his company moved away from Fort Wayne to take up a career as a volunteer. Mark is an extremely humble guy and doesn’t love answering these personal kind of questions because he wants to make sure that credit is given to God and those he serves with. I think anyone that has spent time with Mark knows that he’s as genuine of a guy that there is. He has always cared deeply about people and lived a live of service whether it was serving his co-workers during his career, his fellow volunteers with Carpenter’s Sons, or now neighbors with tangible needs. We hope to tell some stories of our other retirees soon as well.

I was encouraged to hear that things haven’t always come easy with Mark when it comes to trying to manage work/life balance or the fact that he’d say that volunteerism wasn’t as core of a priority during most of his working years outside of coaching his kids’ soccer teams. Proved to me that he’s just a normal guy trying to do the best he can with what he has and is in need of grace just like the rest of us. I’ve not met a person who has the work/life balance or integration thing figured out completely, and I’m not sure it’s even possible. I’m personally finding it hard to find time to volunteer at my phase of life, and I even run a volunteer organization. Things ebb and flow, and Mark’s story reminds me that there are all kinds of avenues to be a “good neighbor’ and serve others. That service to others is as much about how we perceive our responsibilities to others around us wherever we are as it is about “doing things.” Being a good neighbor is about being, not just doing.

I hope people find this podcast encouraging because there are a lot of people in our community that are nearing retirement age without a plan in place of how they’re going to spend their time who also lack the community to navigate a radical change in “time” well. There is no right way to spend retirement, but there are ways to spend it if caring for others, using your hands to help, or if you want to keep working but in a different context. NeighborLink is benefiting from Mark and dozens of other men and women’s lifelong investment into honing their profession as they bring it to work with them on projects. They’re organizers, leaders, builders, creators, communicators, teachers, and compassionate people that want to love others with their gifting. 

I’d love to connect you to Mark or other leaders at Nl who would welcome you to join them. Simply send me a message at [email protected].

Part 4 of a 5-part series where we interview the five neighborhoods that NeighborLink has invited to part of a 2019 comprehensive research project. Our desire is to learn what makes a healthy neighborhood healthy. These five Fort Wayne neighborhoods have been chosen for their unique socio-economics, demographics, geographic influences and levels of neighbor engagement at the association level.

Arline and Jim join NeighborLink for an insightful conversation about the Hoagland Masterson Neighborhood. We started by asking them how they ended up in Hoagland Masterson (HM) and into leadership roles. Then they describe the neighborhood dynamics, the burdens and battles they’ve been facing for years, and what they think makes HM healthy at this moment. Hoagland Masterson has always been a working class neighborhood with higher levels of poverty, but has a long history of committed homeowners that go several generations deep. Arline describes her neighbors as “resilient,” because of the challenges they face and seem to weather. (Link to Neighborhood Map)

I’m pulled to Hoagland Masterson like no other neighborhood other than the one I live in, which is just a block away to the south of HM’s border. I believe that HM is the next up and coming neighborhood in Fort Wayne that no one can quite remember where it’s located, except people like Arline, Jim, and the dozens of long-time residents waiting for the attention they deserve from the City of Fort Wayne, developers, and potential neighbors. It is uniquely positioned between an established, stable, and growing neighborhood, the most ethnically diverse commercial corridor, the potential of Electric Works, and downtown’s current crown jewel, Parkview Field, home of the Tincaps. I’ve been trying to buy a building for NeighborLink here for four years and I tell everyone that will listen that HM is where to invest because it’s the neighborhood that is full of long-time residents that deserve to see things progress.

There is a community of committed neighbors like Jim and Arline that work tirelessly, know more about their neighborhood than any other neighborhood leaders I’ve met, and are the resilient fighters that Arline talks about in the podcast. These are neighbors I want to live by, resource, connect others to, and see what happens for the entire south central Fort Wayne region. The struggle is real for them though as they are marginalized, struggle to get the attention they need to get projects done, and there just isn’t quite enough people energy that other neighborhoods have. This neighborhood is part of why I felt compelled we do this study. They have so much of the same assets that we do in Williams Woodland, just not the same amount of them, and I think that matters. It’s not knowledge, vision, intent that’s holding them back, because they are doing great work. It’s mostly capacity. If they had more capacity, what could happen?

I appreciate Arline and Jim’s candor about what’s been a struggle and seems to fight against justice seeking neighbors. I also appreciate how they acknowledge some recent wins in getting the attention of the City for some infrastructure projects as well as putting pressure on the local electric utility that just built a major substation in their neighborhood without much consideration for the neighborhood. Arline and Jim see promise, see speculation happening as home values increase in their own area, and continue to invest their own resources into stabilizing the neighborhood one house at a time with their own resources.

I think you’ll really enjoy this podcast because it begins to shed some light on the other side of the “healthy” neighborhood reality. It at least for us helps us begin to see how much things are the same among neighborhoods at the core, yet different on the surface. If you’re looking to start investing in neighborhood development, come join NL on a project in HM this summer. 

We’re looking forward to our next phase of the 2019 research project, which includes a two-hour workshop with neighbors from each of the five neighborhoods.

Ben and Tyler join NeighborLink for an insightful conversation about the West Central Neighborhood. We started by asking them how they ended up in West Central and into leadership roles. Then they describe the neighborhood dynamics, the projects they’ve been able to successfully accomplish, and what they think adds to the health of West Central. West Central is celebrated for its diverse population, has benefited from its downtown collar neighborhood status where grand homes were built in one of the first Fort Wayne neighborhoods, and a significant boost in economic development that has been building past 5-10 years. (Link to Map)

West Central has been the place to be if you want to live downtown in a neighborhood setting since it was formed in the late 1800s. It’s the quintessential and grand downtown collar neighborhood that was built by industrial and professional icons of Fort Wayne, which have a history of weathering the seasons of economic swings better than other neighborhoods in a city. Like any neighborhood of that era, some streets and sections of the neighborhood were more grand than the others as the wealthy built their mansions near their empires while those that built the empire lived in close proximity to the places they dedicated their lives to build. West Central is full of grand homes, traditional sized homes of the early 1900s, worker’s cottages, and several historic apartment complexes. While many of the homes may have survived to some extent, many of them were divided into multi-plex homes that made rent cheap and accessible to a wide variety of individuals, particularly artists and young professionals.

West Central has long been touted for its many forms diversity from economics to professions to generational to many other areas. While this is still true to their story, things are starting to change in West Central as the national trend to return to the central core over the past decade is in full swing in West Central. It’s been happening for years in West Central as there have been many concerned residents who have been on personal conversation and development initiative to buy vacant or dilapidated properties with goals of preservation and economic development. Rather than allow a property to play roulette of staying the way it is with the next buyer, they’ll buy it, renovate it a higher standard and sell it in an effort to attract a more affluent or stable homeowner. Those efforts have been combined with some City of Fort Wayne initiatives to leverage federal dollars to renovate key properties on throughways to spur additional development. Ben shares about this development as well as some other situations where longtime owners of multiplex homes are converting them back to single family homes with the desire to sell them rather than continuing to be landlords because the time is now to do those kind of things.

Ben and Tyler talk about a major development in their area, Electric Works, which is a comprehensive redevelopment initiative of a former General Electric manufacturing facility that was responsible for the development of the area in the early 1900s. Ground hasn’t even been broken and just the potential is driving development in their area, which is great for their neighborhood but also brings issues to the surface as well as new issues as they think about the impact of such an effort. They’re huge supporters, but asking really great questions about the human and economic impact of the place they love.

We also talk about in the podcast the role geography plays in neighborhood development and perception. West Central has two many roads in and out of downtown that divides the neighborhood, it technically includes all of downtown, and has a major train track that acts like a wall dividing a section of the neighborhood. Each section has its own character, challenges, and opportunities along with feelings of included or excluded. I’ve been thinking a lot about how things “feel” in a neighborhood within just a block or two of each other and how that plays a part in neighborhood health and connectivity.

West Central is in a really exciting time with some extremely smart leaders at the helm. Their home and garden tour generates significant revenue and exposes them to a lot of potential neighbors. They have intelligent and experienced neighbors leveraging their skills to lead larger scale developments that benefit all neighbors, like preserving old brick alleys. And, they are aware that not all development may be good development. We’re excited to learn from them because we think they have a lot to teach other neighborhoods that are trying to grow and develop.

We’re looking forward to our next phase of the 2019 research project, which includes a two-hour workshop with neighbors from each of the five neighborhoods.