Grace Hill Neighborhood Services
Betty Marver, managing director
Judy Jarmon, director of the M.O.R.E. network
Shirley Baker, Time Dollar Exchange manager
Jane Vacho, resource, communications and volunteer director
Ann Smith, Neighborhood College manager
2600 Hadley St.
St. Louis, Mo. 63106
(314) 241-2200

A reception area in the newly restored interior of the historic old stone church that's home to this outstanding multiple-service organization unwittingly tells a story of neighborhood change. A black-and-white panoramic photo, taken Oct. 29, 1949, in honor of the 100th anniversary of Grace Episcopal Church, it depicts an all-white crowd of middle-class parishioners standing proudly in front of the church building, with sturdy brick residences lining a side street in the background. The church is still there, now subdivided into neat, efficient offices, with a compound of associated buildings including a health center and volunteer-services office, nearby. But the neighborhood is mostly black now; the fresh asphalt streets are pitted and potholed, and some of the brick buildings, abandoned and boarded, don't look so sturdy any more.

Indeed, when Grace Hill Settlement House opened as a social-services activity of the church in 1903, Vacho said, its primary purpose was to provide job training and language classes for the German and Irish immigrants who then made up most of the neighborhood.

Times have changed, and so has the organization. Fulfilling needs as they arose, its particular genius lay in a couple of consistent approaches: Its managers listened to the neighborhood. They invested neighborhood leaders with the charge for each new program, rather than imposing them from above. And they created programs that were related but independent.

Starting with the Grace Hill Settlement House, which continues to provide shelter services, housing placement and peer counseling for homeless people and those at risk of homelessness in seven St. Louis neighborhoods, the organization now consists of that and five more programs, each governed by its own board:

• Grace Hill Neighborhood Health Center, with primary-care centers in four neighborhoods and an array of community health programs including home care, nursing, maternal-and-child health and homeless health services.

• Murphy Blair Residential Housing Corp., a traditional but very successful program that leverages HUD and other funds to create low-income housing for seniors, small families and large families as well as rehabilitating dilapidated housing at low cost.

• Grace Hill Child Development, operating two day-care centers, overseeing a network of neighborhood child-care providers, and offering parenting courses, child-care coops and other aids to parents.

• Neighborhood Wellness Initiative, organizing neighborhood health-awareness councils, smoking cessation programs and other programs aimed at keeping people well.

• Finally, the best and most creative of all. Operating under the umbrella of Grace Hill Neighborhood Services, the Member Organized Resource Exchange (M.O.R.E.), its Time Dollar Exchange and Neighborhood College form an exciting project for organizing and energizing an entire neighborhood.

M.O.R.E., is a network of neighborhood volunteers who fill in the gaps in government social services by providing them to their close neighbors on a voluntary basis, in which one neighbor may help another on one day, and in turn receive help on another day.

Through the Neighborhood College, which offers free classes throughout the year in subjects ranging from parenting to leadership, residents learn the social-service system. Hundreds of them become "Communication Center Leaders," trained to work with needy people and refer them to services. Leaders, working in their own homes, identified by a standard window sign, are issued computers that link them with the Grace Hill office to handle intake and check information.

Other volunteers become members of STAES (System to Assure Elderly Services) Teams, offering daily reassurance and information to frail elderly people by visits or telephone calls. Volunteer programs also link young people in educational programs, tutoring younger children or learning job skills at community businesses. Outreach volunteers go door-to-door to link the rest of their neighbors into the Grace Hill System.

There's still more: A growing number of volunteers are joining in the innovative Time Dollar Exchange," a "barter system" in which individuals who volunteer help to others receive CREDIT for it in a computerized "bank" system that they can later "cash in" when they need help themselves. By driving elderly people on errands, reading to housebound or volunteering home repairs, for example, an individual can build a healthy balance of credit to be cashed in later when they are in need. Frail people who aren't able to do any volunteer work can still take advantage, signing on as "Receivers" and "paying" for the help the receive with hours donated by "Donors," the hundreds of volunteers who work without asking credit, and whose time credits are turned into a pool for those in need.

The beauty of the system is that it not only offers people a real incentive to volunteer to help their neighbors, but by doing so strengthens the community and builds links between its members, Jarmon said.

The challenge is great: The Northside is large, and poverty is endemic. But it's hard to believe that Grace Hill isn't making a big difference.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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