What is Alpha Village?
- Offering a lift to a neighborhood in our city
- A community working together to serve our brothers and sisters in need
- Raising up a neighborhood in need & making it a proud part of Cleveland
Who is Behind Alpha Village?
Several churches, nonprofits, businesses, and other organizations have been coming together to discuss how they would be able to make a change within the community. The effort is being coordinated by Saint Ambrose Parish in Brunswick.
The groups involved care greatly about making Cleveland a better city. Building up the city of Cleveland would not only help families living within it, but also make Cleveland a city we can continue to be proud of.
What will Alpha Village Do?
With a focus on cleaning up neighborhoods in the Ohio City and Clark-Fulton areas of Cleveland, there will be two Community Clean-up Days each year (Fall & Spring). Cleaning-up homes will include: painting, gardening work, mulching, fencing, roofing, and foundational work. Through doing these simple projects around homes, we will be able to make great improvements to the neighborhoods, making it a better place to live.
Alpha Village also facilitates the Warmth Project, an effort to collect and distribute new and gently used coats, hats, gloves, scarves, and boots for underprivileged students and families in the neighborhoods we serve.
Who Will be Involved with Alpha Village?
In addition to generous volunteers (like you!), we will have churches, businesses and other organizations involved with the clean-up day. All involved with the clean-up day are very eager to work with the residents and help fix up each of the homes in the neighborhood.
Who will Alpha Village be serving?
Alpha Village is currently focusing its efforts on improving Clark-Fulton, a diverse neighborhood on the west side of Cleveland, nestled between highways I-90 and I-71. It is comprised of Scranton Road, Fulton Road, and West 25th Street and borders the neighborhoods of Ohio City, the Stockyards, and Brooklyn Centre.
Clark-Fulton is a part of the International Village and located near Thomas Jefferson International Newcomers Academy, a transition school in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District that serves international students and prepares them for academic achievement in the U.S. school system. The Clark-Fulton district and International Village are home to many refugees, including Puerto Rican victims of Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Clark-Fulton contains great ethnic and linguistic diversity. Though many homes, streets and parks in this neighborhood need physical improvement, Clark-Fulton is already full of rich culture, small businesses, and authentic cuisine. Founded by German, Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Italian immigrants in the 1800s, it is also now home to the highest density Hispanic population in all of Ohio. Over 46% of its 11,000+ residents identify as Latino or Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
How will those who are benefiting from the service of rebuilding homes contribute to the project/what are the expectations set for them?
We would like residents within the neighborhoods to be as involved with Alpha Village as possible.