Cohort lessons are viewed through a lens of Asset Based Community Development or ABCD. Through, ABCD, we teach that the assets necessary for making a positive impact in your community already exist in your neighborhood and, through a little training we can help you to identify and leverage those assets to strengthen your organization. Individual sessions are themed around our four pillars of neighborhood vitality: Leadership + Governance, Health + Safety, Technology + Communications, and Planning + Development.

Weekly lessons are taught by our experienced staff, professional civil servants from various departments at City Hall, and other experts in ground-up community building. Whenever possible, we invite past Cohort participants to share how they’ve applied the lessons they learned through our process.

Typically, participation in a neighborhood organization is dependent on one’s residency within the boundaries that the organization represents. However, there are cases where you may otherwise have an interest in that neighborhood organization that are not residential in nature. People who own businesses in a neighborhood, have long familial ties to a neighborhood, or are working for a support organization that is strongly invested in a neighborhood are all reasons that you may be involved in a neighborhood organization that you do not reside in. Therefore, we do not necessarily require residency within the neighborhood organization boundaries that you wish to represent and your relationship with that organization will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Through our candidate assessment process, we will notify the current neighborhood organization president of your interest in representing that organization. This is a courtesy to the neighborhood organization and will not have a bearing on your application.

We understand that neighborhood organization leaders are volunteers that donate their time to their organization. Because of this, we don’t assign heavy workloads outside of class. Some classes require small amounts of homework, such as finding relevant neighborhood documents and bringing them to class or brief reflections on the applicability of certain lessons on their neighborhood’s practices. However, these activities are not collected or graded.

The exception to this rule is that we ask participants to work with their partner to develop a plan for a neighborhood project. The subject of this project is up to the participants and will be presented to the class through a 7-minute presentation prior to graduation. The project does not need to be completed during the Cohort timeframe but must be outlined well enough to be explained to the group. One evening of Cohort is dedicated to this project, with CFN staff on-hand to provide guidance.