The City of Springfield’s Zone Blitz initiative is all about neighbors helping lift neighbors out of poverty in northwest Springfield by addressing the challenges they face and creating opportunities. According to Jody Glazner, the “Give Back” Director at Springfield’s North Point Church, the ideals embodied in the Zone One Blitz are right in their wheelhouse. “We’ve been talking the last few years at North Point, ‘how do we take what we do as Give Back, giving back to our community, how do we take that from an ‘event’ level into a neighborhood level? Kind of this idea of moving from a Good Samaritan to a good neighbor.” Glazner says the church settled on a “Dream Center” model to provide what she calls “hope and help for our neighborhood.” Most “dream centers” around the country seem to concentrate either on the problems of addiction and homelessness, or on kids and family. Says Glazner, “For us, we started to identify what is our biggest problem in Springfield. And everyone kept
↧