New leaders rise on Chicago's West Side
Nate lives in the Island Neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, a mostly black and brown community recovering from decades of disinvestment, white flight, and racial violence.
As Nate stepped down from his role as Civic Association President, he encouraged his neighbors to step up and fill it. They're now leading three projects on their own: turning an unused lot into a community space and nature play garden held in the neighborhood's community land trust, building a community fridge, rebuilding the elementary school playground, and running a rapid response team that supports neighbors in times of crisis.
By celebrating his neighbors and trusting them with real responsibility, Nate showed them they were leaders too. Nate took the program as a participant and now serves on NVP's board.
Soup Helps — and so do neighbors in Minneapolis
Sarah joined NVP's Fall 2025 cohort wanting to bring more connection and care to her street. Her first event in our program was a gathering called Soup Helps: rather than a potluck, Sarah would make three big batches of soup for her neighbors, who would bring themselves and a mug.
The week of the gathering, Sarah's SNAP benefits were revoked, as they were for many around the country. A single mom, she arrived at our NVP session with a dilemma: she could no longer afford the ingredients to make and share soup while also providing food for her children that week. In a beautiful moment of care, another NVP participant spoke up: her mother lived close to Sarah and had a garden. She connected the two, and Sarah came home with a huge bounty of vegetables. Soup Helps went on.
That session, the group ended up in a long conversation about independence and interdependence.
Sarah realized she didn't have to hold everything herself. There were people ready to support her so she could continue supporting others, and that is exactly the fabric NVP exists to build.
A village is mobilized in Brzeźnica, Poland
After years of city life, Marta moved back to her home village of Brzeźnica — home to just 500 people. She took NVP hoping to see neighbors of all generations know and support one another.
She started by hosting weekly yoga sessions, bringing home-baked goods to class, and inviting her students to garden potluck dinners. Real friendships formed: neighbors went on Sunday walks together, shared garden produce, and checked on each other during hard times.
Next, she started a WhatsApp group for the village. Villagers joined in droves, using it for everything from event announcements to coordinating water deliveries during a supply crisis.
As she got to know villagers' skills, she encouraged them to lead their own projects.
When the beloved village library faced closure, neighbors organized a lobbying campaign with the mayor, and won.
As she put it: "Working alongside existing organizations, the fire brigade, football club, and village council, amplified our impact exponentially."
Neighbors building resilience in Bishop, CA
Robert is a retired dad in Bishop, California, a politically divided town of 3,800 people near the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where his own street is lined with Trump signs and "In this house, love means love" signs. He joined NVP hoping to foster more connection and resilience on his street. His first experiment was a potluck. Nobody showed up.
So he asked himself: what does everyone on his street have in common? Wildfire risk. Every house on the block was vulnerable. He went door to door inviting neighbors to a brush cleanup day, and a few weeks later they hauled four tons of brush into a trailer together, clearing a protective perimeter around their homes.
His politically divided neighbors saw that their differences didn't stop them from doing something useful together. When Robert sent the next potluck invitation, they came.
