Tower Grove Neighborhoods CDC honored with an Excellence in Not for Profit Community Building Award from Community Builders Network of St. Louis

Tower Grove Neighborhoods CDC honored with an Excellence in Not for Profit Community Building Award from Community Builders Network of St. Louis last night.  Over 200 people attended the 4th annual Community Builders Network Awards Ceremony at T-Rex in Downtown Saint Louis.  The crowd encompassed community building professionals, business leaders, bankers, political figures, residents and other neighborhood stakeholders.  TGNCDC was selected, in part, for our work in community engagement, completing our framework and vision plan and successfully consolidating three community development corporations into one larger, more efficient operation. Cbabi bayoc, business owner, SweetArt www.sweetartstl.com, and resident of Shaw, was commissioned to create the award. Learn more about his work at cbabibayoc.com   TGNCDC was also awarded $10,000 from RISE Community Development to build capacity with it's tenant screening business named ScreenDoor.  You can find more information at www.thescreendoor.org.

Below are Executive Director, Sean Spencer's remarks:

"On behalf of the TGNCDC board of directors and staff, I proudly accept this award.  The last two years as a combined entity have been full of challenges but I sincerely believe we have set a foundation for continued service to our great City.

Saint Louis is fortunate to have an already developed network of organizations planting the flag each and every day to revitalize and stabilize neighborhoods through public and private investments.  We listen to our community, we set objectives, we collaborate, we align resources and, most importantly, we act.  TGNCDC helps residents and other stakeholders continue to believe in their neighborhoods and support a higher quality of life.  I want to personally thank our board for their ongoing volunteer efforts and specifically acknowledge Janice Drake, our board president, for her decades of service to Southwest Garden and Tower Grove Neighborhoods.  She epitomizes the unsung volunteer champions of block by block community development.

The history of strictly federally funded community development corporations in Saint Louis is over and we’re at an inflection point, only the best CDCs will survive the next several years and it will only happen with professional leadership, proper scale, public and private money and a diversity of funding operations.  We hope everyone in the room thinks about community development and how these critical services can continue into the future.

We thank the Community Builders Network for being a driving force to make the new reality of community development in St. Louis a long lasting one."

Learn more about the Community Builders Network at www.communitybuildersstl.org and InvestSTL at http://investl.org/