The Support Action Teams model for neighborhood based leadership development utilizes a peer support methodology within a larger framework of popular education and community building. It grew out of TEAMS’ work in Central America, building support for new mothers. In a context of enormous need and very limited resources, a peer-based model was able to mobilize a network of over 1000 women who worked for more than 5 years in their neighborhoods to provide popular education and peer counseling. The network was also mobilized to advocate for necessary reforms to benefit new mothers returning to the workforce. This model has been adapted here in the United States to build resident involvement in program planning and implementation of a number of community development initiatives.

How Support Action Teams Work

In mobilizing a neighborhood, 4 to 8 Support Action Team facilitators are recruited from the neighborhood by asking residents who they turn to for help and support. The facilitators’ Team meets regularly for individual support and for training by TEAMS staff in a wide variety of topics such as: effective communication, team building and collaboration, setting and reaching your goals, how to plan and implement a project, meeting skills: facilitation, public speaking, reading behavior in groups, community accountability and evaluation, self-management: handling your emotions and staying in balance, and handling differences between people.

The facilitators model their Support Action Teams after the experience they have shared in their training meetings. TEAMS’ purpose is to unleash the creative capacity of low income residents to address their own life circumstances for individual and community benefit. There are five core elements to TEAMS’ approach:

• Peer support to build the basis for ongoing teamwork
• Goal setting with mutual accountability
• Learning through action and continual assessment
• Financial education and action to create direct access to resources
• Building a broad network to impact common regional and national issues

After 6 to 8 sessions each Support Action Team identifies a common issue in their neighborhood and designs a focused, local response to this issue. For example, an inner city neighborhood without access to a supermarket may decide to form a food cooperative. Or, parents of middle school children may decide to create an after-school tutorial group for children whose parents work. Each Support Action Team receives seed funding to implement its project. As they work together on their project, Team members practice the skills they have learned, continually revising their plans to stay on course with their goals. About six months after they start their projects the Support Action Teams come together in a weekend retreat to learn from each other’s experiences and to coordinate their work or plan shared projects. We are in the early stages of forming a regional collaboration of the neighborhood Teams, the Groundswell Network, that will provide opportunities for shared learning and joint action.