Contact Information:

THE NEEDS

LowIncome

ResidentsOur

Solutions

Myra secured affordable hous-ing and was able to provide housing stability for her family. She is part of the working poor. Although she receives housing subsidies, she lives from dollar-to-dollar and must pay her rent portion, and meet other household necessities. She works much and she longs to be part of the community and positively contribute.

Studies have shown that low-income residents have virtually little savings and no reserves to weather financial hardships. Faced with constant financial fragility, residents suffer from anxiety, housing instability, rent skipping and evictions in their struggle to make ends meet. Residents have no choice but to mentally retreat from their communities and dismiss civic engagement. Compounding the problem, a lack of participating in local volunteerism further reduces the residents’ ties to the com-munity which then fails to strengthen social networks and accrue social equity, and fails to foster skills-building and self-worth. This leads to a vicious cycle of retreat, withdrawal, and despair.

At Bella Communities we believe that all low-income families deserve a meaningful livelihood. At the foundation of building that livelihood is access to affordable housing. Bella Communities preserves and provides affordable housing. Complementing housing, we mobilize low-income residents to volunteer as a pathway to an earned economic opportunity and to aspire to have an enriched life. We want families to not just get by but also get ahead. Since 2009, we have been able, through joint ventures, to attenuate this cycle by providing affordable multi-family hous-ing to low-income families. Our Resident Volunteership United Program (ReV-UP) was launched as a pilot program from 2012-2013. We affixed the suffix ‘–ship’ to ‘volunteer’ to denote a craft or skill gained through volun-teering. ReV-UP is a program-based training program that innovatively places volunteerism at the core of solving inter-related social issues. It was designed and tested as an innovative, supportive service program to tackle simultaneously both financial empowerment and civic engage-ment mobilization.

Housin

g St

abilit

y

Economic Opportunity

Civic

Engagement

ReV-UP

Career Builder Coaching

Finan

cial

Lite

racy

Volunteer Managem

ent

Bank

ing

Tool

s

Rent Credits

Outputs (number of):

We implemented the ReV-UP pilot program in all 4 Indiana properties and completed the ReV-UP pilot program over a 2-year period (2012-2013) to gather early insights and results. The evidence from the field of this innovative economic development yielded:

Opportunity

$17,000Volunteer Earnings

2,000 Volunteer Hours Deployed

96% SurveyedFelt Connected

Bottom Line LIftFrom Fewer Evictions

Contact Information: Khoi D. Pham | Executive Director | 212.268.0359 | kpham@bellacommunities.org

We place volunteers-ship at the core of addressing and achieving 3 main strategies: increase civic engagement, gener-ate economic opportunity and support housing stability. Within these strategies we provide key services and interventions to drive the results. Our productivity and success will be measured in both outputs and outcomes. This is a holistic struc-tured program with deliberate intent and measurable impact.

From Pilot Program to Demonstration PhaseJoin Us Now. We will provide technical assistance and tech-nology support to “early adopters” with the combined goal of outreaching to 6,000 households (approximately 25 prop-erties). The ReV-UP Program Demonstration Phase will cover 12-24 months. Over a 2-year demonstration period, the ReV-UP program aims to achieve the following goals:

• Mobilize significantly more residents to participate in the ReV-UP program, earn an economic opportunity, and increase civic engagement

• Identify and measure key outputs and impact to residents, prop-erty owners, and non-profit host sites

• Make refinements to the implementation and training methodol-ogy, tool kits, data collection tool, and the delivery of services

• Gather a larger body of evidence to move beyond the demon-stration phase and to steer conversation about the cost effective-ness of the ReV-UP program for multiple stakeholders, i.e., low-in-come residents, property owners and non-profit host sites.

Strategies

Services & Interventions

Training/Workshops

Outcomes (change in):

• Workshops & trainees• Volunteer Hours Deployed• Generated Earned $• Non-profit beneficiaries/host sites• Job resumes and job interviews• Incidents of eviction/skipping avoidance

• Volunteer Knowledge• Financial Knowledge & Aspiration• Awareness in options to avoid evictions and rent skipping• Participant Feeling of Engagement

In addition, to test the pliability of the ReV-UP model to other related sectors, we collaborate with a non-profit in Southern California that works with special needs adults to use our ReV-UP toolkits and website back-office engine to engage their special needs students to volunteer.

Insights from Pilot Program

Our ReV-UP Program has received industry interest as an innovative thought-leader and has been featured by: