Common Ground USA
Common Ground USA works to transform conflict into cooperation by fostering trust, inclusive belonging, and collective problem-solving across the United States. Through civic leadership, narrative change, and community-based programs, the organization strengthens relationships, builds civic resilience, and helps communities bridge divides and restore confidence in one another and public institutions.
Project Overview: This collaboration will come together to launch the Front Porch Lab. The Front Porch Lab is is a cross-community working group designed to bring together a diverse group of New Orleanians to identify challenges within their communities and develop actionable solutions. The cohort will represent the “soul” of the city: culture bearers, neighborhood leaders, small business owners, and civic partners. The Lab unites two distinct yet intersecting spaces—one rooted in residents and culture bearers, and the other in institutional leadership—into a shared space where the city’s identity and future can be debated across class, culture, and sector. By bridging the gap between centers of power and the everyday residents who experience their decisions, the cohort is positioned to transform long-standing tensions—such as gentrification, environmental impacts, and blight—into cooperation, culminating in a concrete, collective action.
Partner Organizations
Committee for a Better New Orleans is a civic engagement organization with a 60-year legacy of building, connecting, and empowering civic leaders in New Orleans. Since 1966, they have worked to bridge divides across race and class to build inclusive civic systems. Their flagship Leadership Forum brings 50 emerging leaders together annually to discuss and explore New Orleans’ most pressing issues, including housing, economy, and climate resilience.
New Orleans Chamber Foundation works to enhance sustainable economic development, entrepreneurship, small business growth, and workforce development to make New Orleans a better place to live, work, and play. Within this collaboration, NOCF strengthens recruitment, outreach, and cross-sector participation across a wide ideological spectrum.
Homeboy Industries
Homeboy Industries (HBI) is a Los Angeles–based 501(c)(3) whose mission is to provide hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of their communities. HBI operates the largest gang rehabilitation and reentry program in the world, serving approximately 10,000 justice-impacted individuals annually. The organization employs approximately 480 paid trainees—all of whom have lived experience of gang involvement and incarceration—and 200 staff, the majority of whom also bring lived experience. In a society that too often responds to difference and harm through exclusion and incarceration, Homeboy treats individuals who have been deemed untrustworthy not only as worthy of trust, but of cherished belonging and kinship.
Project Overview: This Collaboration will come together to launch Love Beyond Measure. Love Beyond Measure is an initiative that strengthens trust within families and communities impacted by incarceration through weekly intergenerational healing gatherings in Los Angeles. The project brings together Homeboy trainees and loved ones for shared meals, healing circles, somatic practices, and group support designed to rebuild relationships, encourage honest dialogue, and foster long-term connection across generations. By pairing trauma-informed healing with ongoing community participation, the initiative also aims to create a replicable model for rebuilding trust and community resilience.
Partner Organizations
Nest Global is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing early childhood well-being through trauma-informed, culturally responsive care and family support. Nest Global specializes in creating safe, nurturing environments for young children while supporting parents and caregivers through relationship-centered programming.
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public nonprofit research university committed to advancing equity through education, research, and community partnership. UCLA collaborates on program design, community-engaged evaluation, and learning dissemination, bringing expertise in ethical research, implementation science, and community-based scholarship.
Loyola University Maryland
Loyola University Maryland is a Catholic, Jesuit university founded in Baltimore City in 1852. They serve 5,000+ students annually, offer 40 undergraduate/11 graduate programs, and employ 1,145 faculty, staff, and administrators. For 15+ years, Loyola has maintained a staffed unit—the York Road Initiative (YRI)—dedicated to supporting the neighborhoods along the York Road Corridor in north central Baltimore known as “Greater Govans” adjacent to campus.
Project Overview: This collaboration will strengthen trust across Baltimore’s York Road Corridor by training and connecting an intergenerational network of resident leaders to revitalize shared public and green spaces. Through community listening sessions, leadership training, youth engagement, and neighborhood-led greening projects, residents from historically divided communities will work together to build relationships, foster belonging, and create welcoming spaces that encourage long-term civic connection and collaboration.
Partner Organizations
The York Road Partnership is a neighborhood coalition of 30+ member organizations with over 30 years of experience mobilizing residents to advocate for community resources and improvements. YRP has supported major wins, including two modernized school buildings, neighborhood improvements, and efforts to combat nuisance businesses. The coalition currently operates a Youth Development Committee, Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee, Public Safety Committee, and provides co-leadership for the York Road Public Spaces and Greening Committee.
York Road Improvement District was established in 2023 as a Special Benefits District through a vote of local commercial property owners. YRID delivers corridor clean-and-green services, placemaking and beautification initiatives, public safety services, and economic development strategies along York Road. YRID co-leads the York Road Public Spaces Committee and convenes the York Road Collaborative, a tri-organization partnership focused on community and commercial corridor development.
Govans-Boundary Parish United Methodist Church, established in the 1760s, has served the Govans and York Road communities since 1850. In 2024, it became the only Climate Resilience Hub in North Baltimore. The church owns part of the Govans Urban Forest, is renovating its facilities for community programming, and supports youth engagement through camps and ongoing participation in YRP’s Youth Committee.
Red Wing Arts
Red Wing Arts (RWA) is a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1952 with a mission to build a vibrant community fueled by the arts by connecting, celebrating, inspiring, and leading through shared art experiences. For 75 years, RWA has served as a trusted cultural anchor and civic partner in Red Wing and throughout southeastern Minnesota. RWA’s primary areas of work include community arts programming, exhibitions, arts education and lifelong learning, public art, artist support, and large-scale community festivals and gatherings. These programs are designed to increase access to the arts, strengthen social connection, and create inclusive spaces where diverse community members can come together across difference.
Project Overview: This collaboration will bring together Dakota-led organizations, artists, civic institutions, and community members along Minnesota’s Mississippi River corridor to rebuild trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities through shared cultural and land-based experiences. Through community conversations, crafting circles, public art projects, and river-centered activities led by Dakota knowledge keepers, the initiative will strengthen relationships, foster accountability and collaboration, and create a replicable model for Indigenous-led trust-building and community connection.
Partner Organizations
Honoring Dakota Project (HDP) is a community-centered initiative led by Dakota community members that works to restore and strengthen relationships between Dakota people and the broader public through cultural programming, storytelling, education, and land-based practices. HDP’s work is grounded in Dakota knowledge systems, community accountability, and intercultural dialogue, and centers Indigenous leadership in efforts to address historical harm and rebuild trust across communities.
Owámniyomni Okhódayapi is a Dakota-led nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the sacred site of Owámniyomni (St. Anthony Falls) and revitalizing Dakota cultural presence along the Mississippi River. The organization leads land-based community engagement, cultural education, and place-based programming that reconnects communities to the river as a living relative and shared responsibility.
University of Minnesota Extension is a statewide nonprofit educational organization focused on strengthening communities through applied research, community development, civic engagement, and organizational capacity building. Extension will contribute expertise in facilitation, evaluation, and community partnership development to support project implementation and learning.
