WORKING TOWARDS THRIVING AND FLOURISHING COMMUNITIES

OUR IMPACT MODEL

Mission City Renewal is committed to working for the renewal of communities. We believe that when we align our work and our assets with the collective good of our neighbors, we will see neighborhoods flourishing.

As MCR, we are trainers, designing tools and resources to spark imagination – to consider needs that exist in the world and how one might find their passion and talents meeting that need. We also design and lead workshops to help individuals and organizations learn how to get involved in their neighborhoods from an asset-based community development lens. 

We are also practitioners, navigating the journey of social entrepreneurship in a coworking space, The Impact Guild. We are also building place-based projects in conjunction with churches and faith organizations with unused land assets through Good Acres. These are projects that hold empathetic understanding of the uniqueness of each community at the forefront. 

We believe in the power of our communities, which is why we employ the principles of asset-based community development (ABCD) as our foundation. Practicing ABCD means diving deeper into the places we know and love & identifying their existing resources and strengths. By understanding these places, we can build sustainable projects that bring our neighbors’ assets to the forefront of solutions, in order to create thriving communities.

Mike Green of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at De Paul University defines ABCD as “a path to ‘organize an organization’ or community partnership of local people and their stakeholder groups to find, connect and make productive a growing circle of local assets working for the common good.” 

See how an asset-based community development approach to your work and neighborhood can help you and your community thrive by contacting us today.

“Mission City Renewal, Good Acres and Good Neighbor have been instrumental in discerning a path forward for our local congregation. The first Good Acres gathering I attended was truly a catalytic moment in our organization as hearing from Rev. Josh Esparza brought to life something that I had sensed was an improbable dream. Our team was then able to use Good Neighbor to work through asset-mapping in our neighborhood and identifying was resources are missing in our local community. The Mission City Renewal team has been an invaluable resource for support, encouragement and knowledge as we move forward to becoming a church aligned with God’s mission in the city and the world.”

Jess Lowry, Pastor
Sunset Ridge Church

SHARED VALUES

We incubate projects and design resources that bring together a combination of these core elements:
HOSPITALITY
COMMUNITY BUILDING
CO-CREATION
SUSTAINABILITY
RENEWAL
JUSTICE & EQUITY