It’s Our Time:
The story of how Austin created their first ever Quality-of-Life Plan called ‘Austin Forward. Together,’ a set of comprehensive strategies for a neighborhood renaissance
By Darnell Shields, Executive Director for Austin Coming Together
The Austin Forward. Together (AFT) quality-of-life plan is a set of goals created by and for the community designed to address 23 strategies with 84 total actions across 7 Issue Areas between 2019 and 2024: Community Narrative, Education, Housing, Youth Empowerment, Economic Development, Public Safety, and Civic Engagement.
Today, there are more than 45 dedicated volunteer members across seven Task Forces, one for each Issue Area. In partnership with ACT, these Task Forces have signed on over 116 unique organizations as implementation partners and together have initiated more than 45% of the plan’s total actions so far! Since publishing the plan, ACT has helped AFT projects to garner over $100,395,706 in new investments!
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL PLAN
(or here for the shorter Summary)
How did it all start?
Despite being Chicago’s third-largest population and second-largest geographic area, the Austin community has struggled with a lack of investment and support, battling a prevalent image of crime and violence. But I was raised here and I know the people of Austin are its greatest asset. If we work together, we can make lasting improvements to the community.
Austin Coming Together (ACT) is a backbone agency for collective impact, guiding a unified vision and value-driven strategy for Austin. So when we were offered the chance to work with the community to record their vision in the form of AFT, we jumped on board. ACT was formed in 2010 when a small group of community leaders recognized a need to harness the collective power from within the community to address issues and better coordinate efforts for systemic change in Austin. Since then, ACT has been dedicated to advocating for Austin by building the capacity of service providers, connecting residents to those providers, attracting investments for Austin overall, and relentlessly engaging with the community to make sure our work continues to be impactful.
A quality-of-life plan (QLP) is a proven structure with a comprehensive set of strategies for improving a community, tailored to local needs and desires. The economic development organization Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) has helped facilitate 24 previous QLPs since 2000 via its New Communities Program, garnering more than $872 million in new investments aligned to support community visions in neighborhoods across Chicago.
This is how capacity building at the community level is taken to the next level. By bringing together stakeholders, residents and civic leaders, communities can define a vision for themselves in their own neighborhood, and feel empowered to take ownership over their futures,” said Jake Ament, director of LISC Chicago’s Neighborhood Network.
In each neighborhood, a designated lead agency — a local community-based organization — brings together a diverse group of organizations and residents to identify priorities. ACT was chosen as the lead agency for the AFT plan due to our solid track record of community involvement.
ACT’s unprecedented efforts to create synergy among community members resulted in a steering committee of 20 leaders. With support from LISC and ACT, the steering committee gathered over 500 local stakeholders at three Community Summits to listen to what they felt were Austin’s needs and priorities. And after a 20-month-long process, Austin published its first-ever Quality-of-Life Plan (QLP), created and owned by the community, called Austin Forward. Together. (AFT) in 2018!
Watch the short AFT documentary to learn about recent progress to improve quality-of-life in Austin.
It was unveiled on Saturday, December 15, 2018 at the “Austin Forward!” Community Summit at Michele Clark High School. A performance by the Austin neighborhood Children’s Choir kicked off the momentous occasion, and attendees were the first to get copies of the plan.
In 2021, a short documentary on recent AFT progress and challenges (click to watch) was created.
AFT is a massive body of work and a product of brainstorming and research, conversations and outreach, hard work and growing relationships — but in order to succeed in actualizing this vision, community collaboration is critical. We ask that you join us as we move forward together and transform our community into a new Austin for us all!
LEARN MORE:
- To get updates on AFT progress, read the PDFs of the special publications featured on this page, OR sign up for ACT’s emails by completing the form on the bottom of our website.
- Click here to read the ‘Austin Forward. Together.’ plan
- If you are interested in volunteering as a member of an AFT Task Force to help carry out the plan, contact ACT’s Lead Organizer Grace Cooper at gcooper@austincomingtogether.org
