OUR STORY

NeighborUP America emerged from the work of Bill Traynor and Frankie Blackburn, two long time community organizers and community builders who practice and teach a form of community engagement known as Network Organizing.  It's an approach that helps to support simple human-centered ways of connecting and building trusted relationships among strangers in community life.  

 

In the course of their work, they came to understand that:

 

• That the only way for struggling communities - or communities in transition - to forge a positive future path is to build relationships across lines of difference: racial, political, economic, gender...you name it, 

• That the places that have the highest quality of life are those that somehow have found the courage to embrace change and each other.

• That building community is easy to say but challenging to do in this age of disconnection and division.
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How do we connect with and build personal relationships that we can trust with people we do not know or may not feel comfortable with? New can be exciting and New can be stressful.  Change can be seen as liberating to some and be seen as suffocating to others. 

NeighborUP America is really a network of people, and ideas and action all connected by the simple idea that we are better together.  We want to extend an invitation to you to be a part of this network.   So If you believe that America is a great nation though unfinished, and are proud and willing to be a part of this American Experiment, and are willing to take the initiative to meet just one new person in your Neighborhood in 2023. believe that leads campaigns that promote real solutions to some of the biggest challenges faced by society. We challenge the notion that the way things are is the way things should always be, and are proud to be a force for positive transformation.