Neighborhood Training

Urban leaders give high marks to Heartland's neighborhood training programs. If you're working for action in a city of 30,000, 100,000, or a metropolitan area as large and diverse as Washington, DC, the Heartland Center can help you move from organizing to mobilizing.

Key components to our workshop series are team building, peer learning, and as always, a lively, interactive approach. And we provide a diverse team of trainers reflective of the population we serve.

Some training topics include:

Leadership Styles and Practices

Explores what it means to be an effective leader. Participants learn to assess their own strengths and weaknesses, and create an action plan for building new skills and practices.

Managing Meetings and Groups

Managing effective meetings may seem simple, yet it's often a challenging job for neighborhood leaders, whose role includes leading diverse groups to consensus and beyond. This session is practical and applicable.

Strengthening Membership

Provides keys to maintaining and motivating membership in neighborhood organizations. Focuses on effective ways to keep your membership energized and revitalized.

Managing Conflict

Illustrates that not all conflict is bad and that some conflicts can never be truly resolved. But managing conflict is possible if you consider what conflict means, what is behind conflict and how people react to it. This workshop is fun and engaging.

Building Media Relationships

Learn how to build relationships with the media to increase awareness about your neighborhood, its priorities and activities. Great tips on practical ways to work with our friends in the news business.

Partnering with City Hall

Communicating with and influencing City Hall is a bit of art, and sometimes a bit of a challenge. But it can be done, while making friends and building relationships with public resources essential to your neighborhood's quality of life.

Vision into Action

Picture your neighborhood as you would prefer it to be in the future... and envision what it will take to get there. This workshop takes you from where you are now to where you want to be, in practical steps that any neighborhood can put to immediate use.

Fund-Raising Strategies

Don't complicate the fund-raising game; learn how it can be done at many levels. This workshop will guide you through the basic elements of fund-raising at the neighborhood and community level with lots of advice and practical tools.

Appreciative Inquiry

Investigate a new way of thinking about organizations and neighborhoods. With Appreciative Inquiry, you focus more on what is working well, and "discover" how to replicate success. Learn how to apply AI to neighborhood project planning and volunteer recruitment. Practice the steps: Define, Discover, Design and Deliver and develop a plan for using AI in your work and personal life.

Diversity as Opportunity: Overcoming Community Polarization

America is becoming more racially and culturally diverse. Is your community tapping into the power of new people? Explore your own attitudes about "difference." Learn how diversity is a keystone to neighborhood vitality. Discover ways to use your diverse population as a marketing tool, and share techniques for recruiting a diverse leadership group.

To learn more about neighborhood training, view our sample projects.