Communities built block by block

What a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Bright morning sun, calm, upper 50s. It's pretty quiet except for a garbage truck compacting worn couches, old chairs, used mattresses and other discarded household items that volunteers have collected from neighbors.

Earlier, the drone of lawn-mower engines spread up and down Fowler Avenue west of 30th Street as volunteers cut foot-high weeds in a couple of vacant lots and mowed a dozen neighborhood lawns.

And before that, the cheery voices of the Abide Network's Becky Dunn and others greeted groggy neighbors, offering them plates of cookies and reminders that this beautiful day this day that the Lord has made is neighborhood cleanup day.

For Ron and Twany Dotzler and others involved with the interdenominational Abide Network, the idea of “adopting a block” means more than picking up trash and mowing, although that's part of it.

Their goal is more ambitious: To transform the city, one neighborhood at a time.

That goal is shared by Vanessa Ward, senior pastor at Afresh Anointing Church at 4757 N. 24th St. She and her family live near 38th and Fowler, not far from the Dotzlers' home at 33rd and Fowler.

Ward, too, lives in the neighborhood with the goal of making changes not as an outsider, but as a neighbor.

Ward and Ron Dotzler were among speakers at a Friday meeting that drew more than 60 people, many of them pastors, who met to discuss an Adopt-a-Block initiative that's seeking to enlist churches in the citywide effort against violence.

Speakers told the group they are convinced that if churches work together and encourage their members to be active outside church walls, they can, with God's help, meet people's needs and keep the violence at bay.

“It's important that every church in Omaha extends itself beyond the walls of the church building,” said Bruce Williams, senior pastor at Hope of Glory Church at 73rd and Maple Streets.

Ward has self-published a book, “Somebody Do Something,” about her efforts to make changes in her neighborhood after a 16-year-old boy was shot to death in front of her home.

After much prayer, she decided to start an annual block party along 38th Street from Fowler to Grand Avenue that brought together neighbors and gang members for “food, fun and fellowship,” with no drugs, alcohol or violence.

The party, now in its 13th year, is scheduled for July 31. It draws more than 500 people and requires the help of people from across the city to pull off.

The Dotzlers' group trains Christian leaders and mobilizes volunteers for community work. It's headquartered in an old, 15,000-square-foot converted hospital laundry and boiler building at 33rd and Fowler. The “block” the staff targets actually stretches along Fowler from 34th to 30th, and spills over some to the north and south.

Abide's headquarters serves as a neighborhood hub.

After school, on weekends and through the summer, neighbor kids congregate in the driveway to play basketball. In the winter, youths shoot baskets on an indoor court. Often playing with them is outreach pastor Josh Dotzler, the former Creighton Bluejays star and one of the Dotzlers' 14 children.

The Abide center also hosts several big block parties during the summers. The parties, held on the lawn, offer lots of free food (barbecue, fried chicken, hot dogs and hamburgers), music and games (egg toss, water-balloon volleyball, free-throw contests) that draw hundreds of kids and adults from the neighborhood and beyond.

The Dotzlers also started the multiethnic Bridge Church in a former warehouse at 31st and Lake Streets, where Ron is one of the pastors on a team that includes his son Josh, Myron Pierce and David Brown. About 200 people regularly attend.

Ron Dotzler says the outreach efforts aren't aimed at getting people into the church, although neighbors are welcome. It's more about getting churchgoers to become more involved in the community or as Dotzler puts it: “Get out of the seats and into the streets.”

The Empowerment Network, a community action group based in north Omaha, convened Friday's meeting.

The group's president, Willie Barney, told those gathered at the Omaha Public Schools headquarters at 30th and Cuming Streets that the Adopt-a-Block initiative “is a critical piece to moving forward with our city.”

Hope of Glory's pastor, Williams, told the crowd that the goal of the effort is to have each church adopt a one- or two-block area of their neighborhood then pray for the residents, ask them what the church can do to help them and “let the neighbors know the church is there to support them.”

A national expert on community involvement endorses the ask-first approach.

“That's the first rule of civic engagement,” said Elton Gatewood of Tacoma, Wash., president of Neighborhoods USA, a national group committed to strengthening neighborhood organizations.

“You ask the people in a human way. I don't want anybody doing anything that would affect me without asking me,” Gatewood said.

Dotzler said people seeking to help a neighborhood need to acknowledge the contributions its residents can make. They shouldn't try to come in and impose their own agendas, he said. “We have to be super-sensitive.”

Ward said people may be wary of churches coming into their neighborhoods.

“I don't think they have seen enough of us working together, No. 1. Also, the perception is we're only after your money and only concerned about our own individual niches,” she said.

The Dotzlers have lived in northeast Omaha for years, after moving from west Omaha in 1988.

Ron worked as a chemical engineer for eight years after college but felt called by God to mission work. At the time, he thought the family eventually would end up in a foreign country. He and his wife soon realized, “Wow, we don't need to go overseas, there's plenty to do right here.”

In 1993, after two neighbor girls were slain near the Dotzlers' home at 30th Street and Larimore Avenue, family and friends urged them to move away. Dotzler said that as he prayed about it at 4 o'clock in the morning, he felt God pointing out the neighbors with troubled lives. They couldn't leave and neither should he.

And after years of wondering about the potential of a dilapidated old Immanuel Lutheran Hospital building on Fowler, they bought it, rehabbed it with volunteer help and converted it into their headquarters in 1996.

In late 2007, the Abide staff decided to do more intensive, targeted outreach.

On Oct. 14 of that year, The World-Herald published an article on homicides that had occurred in Omaha to that date.

When Ron Dotzler saw the 27 faces of the Omahans who had been slain a tally that included a 16-year-old neighbor he told his staff, “It appears to me we should be part of the solution. This kind of stuff we can no longer just accept it.”

Before that moment, Dotzler said, they had focused their efforts on north Omaha, an undertaking that seemed overwhelming at times. They decided to “break it down to a meaningful level so everybody could get involved. And the neighborhood (level) seemed to be it.”

Omaha police say Abide is helping to reduce problems in the area.

The group “has had a positive impact on that block,” said Capt. Tim Carmody, who leads the northeast Omaha police precinct. “I encourage others to follow a similar model.”

A review of 911 calls along Fowler from 30th to 34th from Jan. 1, 2007, through May 1 of this year shows the total number relatively steady. Disturbance calls and domestic violence-related calls are up; narcotics-related calls are down.

“If you're not seeing robberies and shootings and things like that, or documented gang activity, those are all positive things to me,” Carmody said.

Neighbors say they have seen a difference since the group's shift in focus.

“They work with the neighborhood a lot,” said Arkayla Suess, who lives down the street from the Abide center. “They mainly keep the young ones out of trouble. It makes a good impact on the younger kids.”

Barbara Patrick, who was mowing her lawn along 31st Avenue, agreed that Abide helps keep neighborhood youths occupied. “I think they're doing a pretty good job,” she said.

Last August, Abide members helped Frankie McIntosh, whose house is across the back alley from the headquarters building, clean up after she had a small fire in the house.

“They're real good people, always helping, pitching in,” she said. McIntosh noted that the group gives neighbor kids lunch sometimes during the summers, handed out book bags to kids at the last block party before the start of school, and they walked through the neighborhood singing Christmas carols in December.

“Even in the winter,” she said, “they've been cleaning up the alley.”

Carmody, the police captain, appreciates that church leaders are stepping forward: “Getting people involved again that's where it's got to start.”

But he said he knows progress won't be immediate, and that the conditions that lead to the violence have developed over time.

“It's taken a long time for the behavior in the community to devolve to where it is. And it's going to take work and effort in the community to restore it to acceptable levels.”

Contact the writer:

444-1109, bob.glissmann@owh.com

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