(WEAA) — A Baltimore-based nonprofit is changing the way community development looks and feels in Southwest Baltimore — and residents are at the center of it all.
Guest host Jaden Foreman sat down with Johnny Martin of Cooperative Community Development Incorporated, an organization committed to building healthy, beautiful and inclusive communities from the ground up.
The model is intentional. Rather than coming into a neighborhood with outside solutions, CCD operates as a cooperative, treating residents as owners and decision makers. Community members have a stake through membership, governance and economic partnership.
"CCD is about shifting the model from doing things for the community to building with the community," Martin said.
That philosophy shows up in the work. The organization transformed a vacant, blighted lot that sat empty for more than 20 years into a thriving green space — something beautiful and useful for the neighborhood it serves.
Painted on a mural in one of the community green spaces are the words "Together we can do great things," a phrase Martin says is more than decoration. He calls it a clarity call for the community. CCD also works with young people, offering tools, resources and conversations to help them understand their own power to create change.
Martin says community development is more psychological than anything else, and that when people see themselves as capable of transforming their surroundings, real progress follows.