Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action

CBANA closed in 2013, with the retirement of Dr. Phyllis Betts, but we feel it's important to keep this page standing as a monument of the great work we all did together, and as a way for lost contacts to find us once again. And in the last few years, we see it's working!
Dr. Betts is living in Ashville, NC but still has the same email address, [email protected] and continues to consult, only now she also gardens and participates in local public policy discussions.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: UM email address no longer active. You can reach out to Dr. Betts on her personal Facebook Account.

Tk Buchanan remained with the University of Memphis and now serves at Community Liaison to the University District neighborhoods, where she's coordinating the "UD Renaissance" and developing 'best practices' in community development on the ground. You can follow her efforts on their page, UDistrict Memphis. Working groups here have reduced structural blight by 49% and are also moving the dial on crime and have an aggressive "Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design" strategy.
Janine Heiner Buchanan is now Managing Director of another CBANA product, Safeways, Incorporated, and under her leadership, this nonprofit is working with some of the largest multifamily apartment complexes in our city to reduce crime, and for 2016 they will be customizing their protocols, which have reduced crime as much as 75% in some of our most chronic problem "hotspots," to address the safety needs of smaller complexes, and this Spring Safeways will partner with UDistrict to pilot this protocol.
We very much appreciate continued interest in CBANA and the traffic this page continues to receive long after we've accepted complimentary challenges with other nonprofits. We're still doing THE EXACT SAME WORK, aiming to restore quality of life to our beautiful city and teaching communities how to solve their own problems, and you can follow our efforts through the pages hyperlinked in this update. Thank you for supporting our efforts and careers for the last two decades--let's stay connected and continue this work!

We at CBANA are saddened to learn of the untimely passing of Peggie Russell. Peggie was the force behing the Mayor's Youth Violence Initiative, just launched as Memphis Gun DOWN by the Mayor's Innovation Delivery Team. Peggie worked for several years with us here at CBANA, helping to launch the first phase of Project Safeways. She was one of a kind as she went on to follow her passion for working with youth. Peggie, or Reverand Peggie, to be more precise, was a woman of many talents and great faith -- in people as well as God. She will want us to carry on her work. We learned a great deal about life and love from Peggie and hope to help fulfill her legacy. No one can fill her shoes, but many of us will try to follow in her footsteps. May Peggie know that Phyllis Betts and Richard Janikowski and the entire CBANA staff--we mourn your passing. And may Peggie's husband Cedric and her vastly extended family take comfort in in the knowledge that she is loved and missed by many and that she made a difference that will not die.

The Safeways Community Action Partnership, which evolved out of a CBANA pilot project to strengthen community safety and enhance resident quality of life in local apartment communities, will be hiring soon: Area/Project coordinators should have experience in community development/community safety (positions suitable for early career applicants), and the Research/Program coordinator will have strong quantitative and qualitative research skills and experience in the criminal justice system, as well as outstanding communications skills. Experience as a trainer a plus. Official job descriptions are being developed. Contact Phyllis Betts, CBANA director, at [email protected], to express your interest. You can also send along your resume.

This excellent event will bring everyone up to date on our former Senior Research Associate, Tk Buchanan's efforts as the University of Memphis' new Community Liason. Lunch will be provided through the generosity of Garibaldi's.

Help needed! Please consider volunteering for Habitat. They, as you already know, do great work.

CBANA salutes our cherished partners, the Memphis Police Department - the angels that watch over us in the field. This year, as we surveyed our city's most serious crime "hotspots," we were escorted by an OCU patrol unit to ensure our safety (as we had several times before). Patrol Officer MarToyia Lang and her partner left our company briefly on one occasion to apprehend a violent criminal one sunny day in Whitehaven, but otherwise took the lead as we wound through multiple vacant and abandoned apartment complexes. They shielded us like family, and during breaks, family was the topic of conversation as we marveled at Officer Lang's seeming ability to have it all, with four children and a very respected position in law enforcement.
On Friday, December 14, as CBANA convened at the University Holiday Party, Officer Lang and her partner delivered an arrest warrant and was gunned down in the line of duty.
Funeral services for Officer Lang will be at Hope Presbyterian Church on Friday, December 21, 11AM. Donations to her family- four small children struggling through their first holiday alone- at any Regions or SouthTrust bank.

The 2012 Lending Study of Shelby County is now online! Our webmaster sneaked in there and uploaded it while we were all busy finishing up the Airport City project!!!!

Sorry for our delay in notification!

The study looks at most recent data releases from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (2010), describes patterns, then overlays this data with 2012 public records data for a discussion of outcomes...Racial disparity in lending continues...these nuggets and much more - follow this link to our website!

http://cbana.memphis.edu/Lending2010/index.php

The 2010 Lending Study for Shelby County, Tennessee The most recent report prepared for the , July 2012. By Dr. Phyllis Betts, Carol Gothe, Tk Buchanan, Janine Heiner and Elisabeth Henderson.

CBANA tries to swing by this party every year- it's one of our favorites. And about the best cause imaginable...oh and look! A COUPON!!!

http://www.getmyperks.com/deal/24753/toolboxbash?label=entercom-memphis&utm_campaign=20121128&utm_medium=email&utm_source=entercom-memphis

Half-Off Tickets to Habitat for Humanity's Tool Box Bash Fundraiser Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis will hold its largest fundraiser of the year, the 11th Annual Tool Box Bash, on Friday, Dec. 7, 2012, at The Great Hall in Germantown. The Valero Memphis Refinery Tool Box Bash, which features a live and silent auction, live music, an array of food and dessert...

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/dec/02/north-memphis-community-becomes-lab-for-do-or/?print=1

Frayser community becomes lab for do or die experiment : Memphis Commercial Appeal Not long ago, Charia Jackson had a date with a young man who had moved to Memphis from California. He said he would pick her up. She told him she lived in Frayser."He said, 'Oh, no. I'm not coming up there. Ever,'" said Jackson. "I could not get him to come to Frayser. We met somewhere in East Memph...

CBANA salutes Regional Outreach Manager for Students First and our beloved former intern, Sutton Mora Hayes, and Stand for Children Tennessee's executive director and one of our longtime community partners, Kenya Bradshaw- both of these amazing women made the Memphis Business Journal's "Top 40 Under 40" for 2012!

http://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/news/2012/11/16/presenting-mbjs-2012-top-40-under-40.html

Presenting MBJ's 2012 Top 40 Under 40 - Memphis Business Journal Memphis Business Journal is proud to introduce its 2012 Top 40 Under 40 class.

Here comes another Best Practice!

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/nov/05/proposed-memphis-real-estate-registry-part-of/?print=1

Proposal weighs registry of Memphis properties, foreclosed homes : Memphis Commercial Appeal The proposed legislation requires the creation of a registry for foreclosed, abandoned or vacant properties. Mortgage holders would be required to inspect a property within 30 days of a notice of default, foreclosure or abandonment. Within 10 days of the inspection, the mortgage-holder or a designat...