ACT currently works in five neighborhoods: Bedford Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Jamaica, Mott Haven, and Washington Heights/Inwood. Within each neighborhood, ACT convenes residents, community based groups, service providers, churches, and schools, and builds on existing coalitions to form a neighborhood collaborative.

Through the collaborative, ACT helps the neighborhood plan for itself. The steps for each community are:

• convene key stakeholders to define the collaborative’s role and goals;
• identify potential fiscal agents and office locations;
• validate data on community conditions and existing resources develop collaborative participation, agreement membership and by-laws;
• and recruit, hire and train a local planner (by consensus).

The collaborative works together to create neighborhood specific strategies to revitalize the neighborhood and improve the quality of services to connect families and children to the right services at the right time. It’s a “bottom up planning in a top-down world.”

Snapshot of Collaborative Accomplishments:

• Vacant lot clean-ups to develop Green Thumb Projects
• Identifying 10 potential sites for midnight basketball courts in collaboration with NYC Department of Parks and Recreation
• Organizing Early Childhood Coalitions
• Organizing job shadowing programs for junior high school students in conjunction with local development corporations
• Distributed City Family, a publication to inform New York’s Spanish speaking communities about ways to improve their quality of life
• Incorporated Youthline into collaboratives’ information system