The new Community Navigator is the evolution of our former Managers of Community Partners. Navigators will collaborate with a wide array of community partners to meet the learning readiness needs of all residents, to create safe and supportive learning environments, to strengthen families in support of education and to support community advancement. The Navigator is charged with interfacing and planning with community partners and integrating programs and services into the community. Working with a community-based team, the Navigator facilitates activities within five domains of focus: youth development, comprehensive wellness, family support, education, and community engagement.

I3 Academy/Camp Invention: I3 Academy, Alabama’s most recently approved public charter school, brings the nationally recognized summer program Camp Invention to the greater Woodlawn community. Camp Invention was created by members of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. This camp will serve students from grades K-4, providing them with an opportunity to experience project-based learning in the areas of reading, mathematics and STEM. This camp is being conducted at St. Barnabas Catholic School and will serve as a preview to the academic offerings of I3 Academy.

Summer Bridge: Summer Bridge is a free program designed to help familiarize high school students from Woodlawn with various aspects of collegiate life, both academically and socially. The program’s objectives are to assist students in an academically challenging high school environment; to expose students to, and engage them in, college project-based learning experiences to develop and reinforce academic skills; to provide students with an opportunity to begin building and utilizing community resources while building peer networks; and to acclimate students to a college campus and career planning. Week long camps will be conducted at both UAB and Jefferson State Community College campuses.

Woodlawn Music Tech Summer Camp: The Woodlawn Music Tech Summer Camp is for middle through high school age students and is designed to build awareness of the technology used in music production and recording engineering. Campers are exposed to the latest music and video production tools, such as Garage Band, Pro Tools, Reason, and iMovie. They learn how to compose and record their own songs and gain real-world experiences in the state-of-the-art recording studios and music tech labs at Audiostate 55.

The YWCA Central Alabama annually conducts a summer program called CREW (Creating Responsible Educated Working teens). This eight-week summer enrichment program offers job skill training as well as academic and personal development opportunities. Participants engage in a myriad of sessions which focus on the importance of education, dress code, work ethic, commitment, listening skills, responsibility, team building exercises and professional preparation. The program invites rising 8th through 12th grade students to attend while earning a weekly stipend during the summer.

The Healthy Families Initiative is a collaborative effort backed by the District Attorney, working in conjunction with area school districts, to identify resources to assist and prevent the families of students from entering the family court system. There are inter-agency-team (IAT) meetings comprised of different agencies including Birmingham P.D., JBS Mental Health, DHR, Family Court and others where information is shared to provide context concerning the experiences of individual families to discover root causes contributing to various identifiable issues. Community stakeholders work with the families to devise the best course of action to Help the Family resolve various issues and to hopefully avoid any future occurrences.

In response to the need for adult workforce training, Woodlawn Foundation recently launched Woodlawn WORx to holistically address the economic mobility needs within the community. By building key partnerships among best-practice providers, Woodlawn WORx creates an insulated pipeline of wraparound services, allowing our residents to overcome the barriers that have prohibited them from accessing and completing workforce development programs in the past and putting them on a path to economic success.

Woodlawn Foundation recently celebrated the graduation of the inaugural class of a new Certified Medical Assistant (CMA) program. Students completed the twelve-week program in partnership with Christ Health Center and Jefferson State Community College. The graduates will seek job opportunities in the community or with larger medical facilities across the city. The collaborative community-based CMA program is offered at no cost to participants and is the first of its kind in Woodlawn to provide certification opportunities that prepares and equips its graduates with the necessary skills relevant in the current job market as well as for future growth. Most importantly, it provides Woodlawn residents with access to increased financial opportunities. The CMA program will continue with future classes with the addition of new certification programs to follow.

Seeking to address the legal needs of residents in the community, Woodlawn Foundation partnered with Birmingham Bar Volunteer Lawyer’s Program to create the “Woodlawn Legal Help Desk”, a place-based program offering pro bono legal services in an accessible and equitable manner. Many estate-related topics are covered during the monthly sessions, including wills, housing issues, insurance challenges and other non-criminal areas.

In 2019 we saw new leadership emerge in the Woodlawn Community. At the foundation we are seeking to develop and expand leadership capacity for residents and will launch a new leadership program designed to help foster relationships and promote more community lead revitalization efforts. Residents continue to be the central focus of our work and we will continue to support them and amplify their voice.