Our Journey
Standing in the Gap Community Development Corporation (SITG) is a young collective impact organization with the intent of ensuring equal access to mental and physical health services, career and educational development, and legal access for young women and girls from financially disadvantaged backgrounds to help them become responsible citizens. As a collective impact organization, SITG seeks to collaborate with other human service organizations to provide resources to the women and girls who we serve.
SITG was created after discovering that poor adult and adolescent females will often experience barriers when attempting to connect with these resources, preventing them from being able to reach their full potentials. These barriers justify the need for the existence of SITG. Our organization seeks network with other community and corporate organizations to lay the groundwork by which those same individuals can serve as resources for their communities. This community based organization is also focused on convening the power of the community by using both laypeople and professionals within the community to empower and revitalize the neighbourhood by collaboration and other empirically derived methods. Specifically, we are identifying ways to become even stronger influencers who have the power of bringing together different types of organizations with the purpose of improving physical health and mental outcomes, improving school retention, increasing graduation rates, and reducing discipline problems such as those with suspensions, detentions, and legal incarceration for poor young women and girls. We are also hoping to secure basic funding towards ensuring the long-term success of our collective effort. With the recent emphasis on these types of services for girls and women from the NoVo Foundation and the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls, the importance of the services offered by SITG of providing women and girls access to educational, mental and physical health, legal advocacy, and career advancement resources not only becomes important but also are essential in that a growing number of organizations recognize their critical role in ensuring a more productive society. The emphasis also requires the need for organizations such as SITG and others like it to provide a crisis level and immediate intervention. Therefore, SITG’s role of communicating the sense of urgency to funders and collaborators alike becomes paramount.
In addition, as SITG continues to develop its guiding vision and strategy and supporting aligned activities, we are seeking ways to communicate our vision for the northeast Florida metropolitan area’s urban core by including a clear pathway for success and making way for shared measurement and goals. We are seeking support as we work to convene the six CEO-level actors who will not only have an ongoing engagement but also will focus on the overarching goals and missions that will support the work of the collaborative. More importantly, we are seeking support as we convene several organizations from the private sectors, education institutions, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies to sustainably develop and invest in the northeast Florida area.
As a young, budget-strapped organization with great promise and knowledge, we are seeking ways to address the inequities that exist for young women and girls from financially underrepresented backgrounds. We believe that opportunities will not only propel the communities we serve forward, but will also help establish a foundation of ways to maintain the dissemination of this information to other stakeholders who are invested in helping our communities advance. As early career professionals with limited budgetary funds, we have multiple contacts in our respective fields but know that we must be able to harness this energy to maximize SITG’s potential.
About the Individual Partners
Inspired to be a catalyst for perpetual social uplift and strengthening communities globally, social activists and high school classmates, Esther D. Coleman, Esq., Lashawndra L. Storr, SPHR, and Xuan O. Stevens, Ph.D. collaborated to form a social benefit corporation that harnesses the power of the community to effect dynamic change within the financially distressed communities of mid-to-high-metropolitan areas. Whereas Standing in the Gap Community Development Corporation is a newly formed corporation, it is one that combines the strength and expertise of each of its founding members – harnessing and corralling the resources of social mindedness, corporate and business acumen, and mental health and general health wellness. The motto of Standing in the Gap Community Development Corporation, "providing seeds for a change,” embodies an inherent fidelity to reinvest in the community we serve to ensure that individuals who are recipients of SITG CDC’s services not only are afforded unique opportunities to establish and achieve academic, college, and career aspirations but also become conduits to the community to help itself flourish. Standing in the Gap Community Development Corporation’s opportunities for guidance, support, and mentoring is embodied in every facet of programming.
Collaboration between Community Organizations and Standing in the Gap Community Development Corporation
A growing number of organizations are recognizing the importance of collaborations between not-for-profit, for-profit, community-based, and business-oriented organizations. This immediate, crisis level intervention calls for the collaboration between these organizations and SITG, as these organizations provide necessary services for individuals and families in need. More importantly, given that many neighborhoods within the heart of Jacksonville are one of the poorest neighborhood in northeast Florida, this need becomes paramount. According to the US Census Population Map, estimates of 30%, at the lower end, up to 70%, at the higher end, of residents within the lower east side and northwest sides of Jacksonville fall below the poverty line. Poverty is accompanied by a host of significant problems including poor mental health and physical health outcomes. The collaboration, such as the one proposed here between SITG and these community-based organizations can provide a number of benefits for the poverty stricken neighborhoods.
Benefits of the Collaboration
First, collaboration offers the benefit of sharing and improving utilization of resources. One such resource that may not be utilized well is space. Given that space can often offer premium benefits, designing and using space specially designated for the provision of services and implementation of the the mission becomes paramount. Other resources that can be shared and best utilized include sharing infrastructure and administrative expenses to develop and strengthen programs, using complementary skills and abilities, and increasing leadership skills. By circumventing these problems head-on and thinking proactively, board members are aware of opportunities that will improve efficiency and sustainability, thereby, saving costs and expanding the value proposition for both organizations before crisis mode is reached.
Second, by doing so, it can combine marketing efforts to ensure that each organization’s mission is identified in the marketing material but also to ensure that the benefits of the collaboration are also publicized. As a growing number of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations realize, development activities can be a challenge. Therefore, sharing development and fundraising activities is an untapped resource through combining the efforts of both. Third, this collaboration between community organizations offers an opportunity to form a new organization under the auspices of strengthening program and implementing improved administrative services. The shared planning and delivery of programs can benefit both organizations. As for-profit companies have long recognized the value of collaborations, more nonprofits are recognizing the same benefits to such arrangements.