Amy welcomes representatives from Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County to talk about the connections with the community and the important work they do to provide resources and support for immigrants and low-income populations in the Iowa City area.

Learn more about NCJC and their 50th anniversary celebration

Lauren Lavin:

Hey everybody. Welcome back to From the Front Row. We’re so glad you’ve tuned into this week’s episode featuring the Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County, or as you’ll hear them referred to for a lot of the episode as NCJC. NCJC is a community-based, family-centered human services agency that’s been serving Johnson County, Iowa since 1973. Yeah, 50 years, which is also why we’re doing this episode this week because it is their 50-year anniversary celebration this weekend, which you’ll hear more about later on in this episode. NCJC operates two community centers in Iowa City and provides outreach and programming to an additional five targeted neighborhoods and a dozen schools. There programs and activities reach over 400 children and youth and 200 adults each day. Now, we have three individuals that are talking on this podcast today about NCJC, Bella, Chastity, and RaQuisha, and they’ll introduce themselves once the podcast gets underway, but I really enjoyed editing this episode.

You can definitely hear their passion come through, and to me, there’s nothing more inspiring than people passionate about their jobs and serving their community. I think one thing that I’m taking away from this, and I hope that you as listeners can listen for, is NCJC’S desire to make true and authentic community within neighborhoods in Johnson County. Another point that they made that I actually even wrote down is that their goal is to make sure the people that they’re helping feel like they’re the important ones and to teach them to support themselves so that NCJC really isn’t needed anymore. I hope you find this episode as enjoyable and uplifting as I did. If you want to get involved with NCJC, we’ll talk about that a little bit more at the end. Now, onto the podcast.

Amy Wu:

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining me today. I’m so excited to have you guys on the show. If you guys could introduce yourselves and kind of tell us a little bit about what you do at NCJC, what the acronym stands for, and maybe what your title is. We can start with Bella.

Bella Arredondo:

Hello. I am Bella Arredondo. I am the Volunteer and Community Engagement Specialist here at NCJC. I am new to this role, so my job consists of a lot of community engagement, a lot of different, trying to let the community know about our different resources and opportunities that we have, but also, a big part of my job is volunteers. I do everything volunteers. I set up the different volunteers. I set up the different opportunities, let people know of the opportunities. We all work for the neighborhood centers. It’s the Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County. We acronym that as NCJC.

Chastity Dillard:

Awesome. Thank you again for having us on this. My name is Chastity Dillard and I’m the Developments and Communications Director for Neighborhood Centers. I’ve been a part of Neighborhood Centers for nine years, and my job consists of fundraising and communications, brand management. Just really getting the word out to the community about who we are and really bringing in all the dollars to support our agency as well.

RaQuisha Harrington:

Again, just to piggyback off of what she said, thank you for having us. My name is RaQuisha Harrington. I am the Associate Director here. I’m also onsite HR manager as well. I have been at Neighborhood Centers or affiliated with Neighborhood Centers for quite a while. However, I’ve been in this role for just a little over a year.

Amy Wu:

Well, awesome. Thank you guys. It looks like we have a variety of positions here, which is great, so I’m excited to hear about you guys’ different takes on the different aspects of NCJC. Just to get started, to any one of our listeners who has not heard of NCJC, what is it about or how would you describe it?

Chastity Dillard:

Who wants to go first? Okay. Well, I’ll give the technical version, but I’m sure you’d love to hear our experiences, but Neighborhood Centers has been around since 1973 because we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. We work with families and [inaudible 00:04:39] throughout Johnson County, predominantly in low-income neighborhoods. We help a huge amount of immigrant and refugee families. We love to say that we serve new Iowans, whether they’re American-born, they’re from surrounding metropolitan cities, or they’re from abroad and then they’ve just made their new home here. We focus on giving our families and youth the tools and resources they need to be most successful so they can navigate this new community. We focus in four main areas, early childhood education, youth programs, family support, and teen engagement, and we really just work to bring the whole family together and just connect them with so many people in this community. That’s our overview.

Amy Wu:

That’s amazing. Thank you so much. If you guys could talk about maybe the aspects that you kind of interact with most of NCJC, I would love to hear what that looks like on a more detailed or day-to-day basis.

Bella Arredondo:

As I mentioned, I’m the volunteer and community engagement specialist, but I started actually at the Neighborhood Centers about two years ago as their language liaison. I really love, I feel like I’ve been blessed to have been able to be part of the more hands-on and then now, also being an administration, making decisions and trying to help the kids and the families, but when I first started, if I’m being honest, I never thought that I’d be somebody that would work with kids and now I don’t want to not work with kids or work to help kids and these families. It’s just what we do. We’re genuinely helping these people and you’re a big person in somebody’s life, even if it is, I was just working in the afterschool program and I was with them for about four hours every day, but I took that serious.

These kids need to learn respect, need to learn different social skills, need to learn a lot of different things, and I tried to do that even if it was just their afterschool program, they were learning things through the fun, even though they didn’t realize they were learning things. We would still try to do that, and it’s kind of nice that we have all these different aspects of our programs. We have afterschool programs, we have early childhood programs, we have youth programs, we have the bicycle club that we have that we do over the summer that Amy has been an amazing volunteer for us, and we have a lot of different events that we put on.

We have our big 50th anniversary event coming up soon on September 23rd, so I really hope that anybody hearing this can make it. It’s September 23rd at Mercer Park from one to 5:00 PM or if you would want to volunteer and give back to your community, then let me know, Bella Arredondo. I could put my information out somewhere, so you guys can definitely let me know if you want to or are interested in helping out on the community. It’s going to be really fun. We’re kind of trying to showcase the different variety of cultures that we have within our families, within our programs, but also within the people that work here at NCJC, too. We’re very diverse and there’s going to be a lot of good food, lots of good activities, there’s going to be good performances, so you guys will not want to miss it.

Amy Wu:

That’s awesome. I will be there actually. I’m excited and I’m looking forward to that, and that’s a great segue into our next question. Because the 50th year anniversary is approaching, I know we kind of touched on this earlier, but could you give maybe a brief background on how NCJC started? When did it start? How did it start? What were the causes that it was really invested in its infancy and then throughout the decades?

Chastity Dillard:

Yeah, that’s a great question. NCJC, I said I think earlier, started in 1973, but it started as a grassroots or neighborhood level efforts, where families and community members came together because they were concerned about some of the issues that were going on in secluded areas, which started on the west side of Iowa City. Now, it’s considered or called the Pheasant Ridge neighborhood or Pheasant Ridge Apartments, the fact that it was a marked four apartments, and at that time in the 70s, it was very cut off from the rest of the Iowa City community, which was still growing, so they didn’t have all the resources that they needed to survive. When kids don’t have anything to do, they go out and they might vandalize a little bit or they just entertain themselves, and families were just really concerned on how can we give our kids what they needed?

They contracted and connected with the school social work at the University of Iowa and the management staff of the apartment complex, and they were able to secure a three bedroom apartment where they began doing afterschool programs and drop-in programs in that building to just give kids a safe place to be, which is so important, and some guided instruction, and just offer their supports in that way, and because of that, the Neighborhood Centers was built and created, and we stayed in that three bedroom apartment on that side of town until the late 90s, but we also, during the late eighties, saw a need in other areas of the community, so we went over to the Broadway neighborhood part of Iowa City, and we actually built our first building over there, beginning in ’89 and completing in the 90s and did the same work for the same kind of community in that area. And then, as I said earlier, we have a huge connection to immigrant and refugee families.

In the early 70s and throughout the 80s, NCJC was home and welcomed a lot of our Asian American or Asian immigrants during that time, and then the 90s, we had an in surge of Latino families that showed up in late 90s, a lot of more African specifically Sudanese refugees and [inaudible 00:10:34] came. When we get into the 2000s and maybe RaQuisha has a story to tell. We started to see more and more different types of families come in, whether it’s again, American families, specifically African-American, black American families coming from Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Kansas City to the late 2010s where we had more Congolese families. We always want to make sure that we have our doors open for anyone that’s in here, and we really focus on preventative care, of just giving again, the families the tools they need to be most successful and that they don’t have to, we don’t want to be crisis focused. We want to make sure that any service we’re providing is an immediate answer versus waiting until something tragic has happened and trying to fix it in the aftermath. Am I missing anything?

RaQuisha Harrington:

No, you covered it.

Chastity Dillard:

Okay.

Amy Wu:

Yeah. Wow. It’s incredible to hear about both the diverse cultures that are present in the neighborhoods that you guys serve, but also how it’s changed over time and how NCJC has adapted to different beads over time. I think it’s noteworthy that it has been serving the Iowa City community for 50 years and continues to, which shows that there is this need that is being met there. It’s really cool that you guys play such an integral role in new Iowans lives, as you mentioned before.

Bella Arredondo:

Thank you. I think another thing to mention is that we, right now, every single day we help about 400 to 500 kids, and that’s just children, and we have programs from infancy all the way up to programs for adults, and I think that’s just amazing. That’s every single day, 400 to 500 kids, and we’re still growing and expanding.

Amy Wu:

That’s great, and that kind of leads into the next question. This is great. My next question is kind of about how, what makes NCJC unique in its role in Iowa City? You touched on how you serve families across their entire lifespan, essentially from very early childhood all the way up to adulthood, and I think that’s something that’s probably pretty unique to what NCJC does, but if you guys want to elaborate on that or add anything.

RaQuisha Harrington:

I can share my own personal story as a prime example of how Neighborhood Center encompasses the whole entire family. When I was first introduced to Neighborhood Centers, I was a young mother, just freshly moved to the area, and I was introduced to neighborhood centers by enrolling my daughter into an afterschool program in which I also, being a university student, I was awarded work study, so I also was able to have employment here as well. As my family grew, as I became more self-sufficient in the community as well, I also lived in the Pheasant Ridge neighborhood. Again, being surrounded by diverse backgrounds, my neighbors became my family. We learned a lot culturally about different people, and that was truly a new introduction, a great difference from where I grew up at and where my daughter and I had come from, and then being here at the university, so we had all of that. We had all the supports, everything.

I eventually worked my way up, not only from work study, but working in different roles through work study, like in the after school program, some of our pilot programs we had on site.I was able to work in our early childhood room as well. I eventually became a parent support worker, too. So again, as my family is growing, I’m also giving back to the people who are moving here. My personal experience was also able to be shared and to be motivation to people who are also trying to just be more self-sufficient and understanding all the resources and programs and many different ways that myself and my family could be involved. Well, all three of my children were able to come to Neighborhood Centers from the infant room all the way up to the afterschool programs, and even some of our programs such as G World and the other program, guest program, all of those things they were able to participate in as well.

And then when it came to community event, being able to, the grass root, and seeing what the problems were and figuring out solutions to help people get through whatever those situations were. I, as much, am a beneficiary of those programs and services as anyone else, so when it comes to our staff, when it comes to the families that come to the door, anybody that comes to the door, it’s definitely understanding and you have a different kind of compassion for them because you, too, are experiencing that, and that’s what I love so much about Neighborhood Centers. It represents the true essence of the community. You get so many diverse people coming in, so many different languages, so much culture every single day and leadership, your leadership staff is, your leadership team is very diverse as well, and represents the population that we serve. There’s an opportunity for everyone to advance and to grow and to develop skills and to share ideas and be celebrated every single day for just everything that goes on in the community.

It really helps, and we have young people that have grown up in our program that also come back and their staff, they’re employed here and they’re doing the same thing, giving back and bringing other people to the community events and to the neighborhoods to see what more can be done. We always say it’s full start going. It truly has been for me to now be the Associate Director and to see it in a whole nother light, from starting work study all the way to being one of the leaders and the people who give the vision and direction and just make sure the day-to-day things are going well. As you can see, that’s just one of the examples, and there’s so many more stories very similar to mine of people being successful with the supports from Neighborhood Center staff and just the community as a whole.

Amy Wu:

Thanks for sharing. It’s great that you have witnessed yourself, firsthand, the impact on your life, and then you get to watch even more of the generational impact continue on throughout the years. I’m also interested in Bella and Chastity, if you have any other thoughts on that as well.

Bella Arredondo:

Well, [inaudible 00:18:06] I feel like, so like I said, I started in a position, I was just an afterschool program language liaison, and then easily, I ended up being, within a couple months, I ended up being the lead for Mark Twain Elementary afterschool program as well as the language liaison, and now I’ve moved up to the administration being the Volunteer and Community Engagement Specialist, so it really does show the growth and how much opportunity and how much you can really do what you’re meant to do, one, but also, how much NCJC really just helps you be the best person you can be and gives you those opportunities to be able to do what you are meant to do, and I think that’s just beautiful and seeing all the different, hearing of all the different stories of people being here for 14, 15, 20, 30 years. It’s just amazing, and honestly, I tell our executive director and everybody here all the time, I was going to say, I’m going to graduate here. No, I’m going to retire here. I’m going to retire. It’s a good place to work at for sure.

Chastity Dillard:

Yeah, I would add that one of the things that amazes me about the neighborhood center is just how deeply connected we are to the community, of how much hope that neighborhood centers can bring to people. I’m really amazed. We have a team of our family support workers and they’re very unique because they all, five of them, they identify with the cultures and the languages of the people that they serve, so collectively, they’re speaking seven languages, and that’s Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Lingala, and Swahili, and I’m forgetting another one. I think it’s English or something else. We’re all speaking English.

Amy Wu:

That’s amazing.

Chastity Dillard:

And a lot of our families value it so much because to be able to walk in this community without someone supporting you is just so difficult, and I say that as a person who is from America and is used to and accustomed to this culture, so that really stands out to me. RaQuisha already said the fact that we also, we serve people and then we empower them to also, walk along with us and serve themselves and other people in the same way, where we’re non-agency and we just go in and we are making ourselves super important. We make sure that the people that we’re touching are the important ones so that they can go out in the community and continue to be that important source. We don’t want to be needed forever. We want them to be able to build their own supports and go out and just give back as well.

Amy Wu:

Here being that constant. You can do it, too.

RaQuisha Harrington:

Yeah, for sure. We really embrace the talents, just the energy that people bring in, so like Bella had mentioned, we do bike programming. That’s not our main focus, but we know that that’s a very important skill to have and that a lot of people may not have access to a bike, so we partner with a bike library, and other biking businesses to provide that opportunity for young people in our community to be able to have access to a bike and a lock, and we focus on health and wellness. We have a garden out here, we have art projects. We have all of those things where it’s in their neighborhood as well and within their walking distance, and surprisingly, a number of our activities are free or no cost. We’re partnering with other nonprofits or municipalities to ensure that people have access.

We try to eliminate as many barriers as well, but also not try to enable people, but empower them, so eliminating those barriers, that this childcare or if it’s transportation, oftentimes we are offering that so people can come in and learn a craft, or get further education, or things such as that. We’re always trying to find ways. We are heavily grant funded with a lot of things, but we’re working on ways to just be able to partner with other organizations as well so that people have the ability to participate and not feel like, oh, just because I come from a low income environment that I can’t participate in that. We do all that we can to make sure people have access to a number of things.

Chastity Dillard:

Another thing, too, like how you said we have the bike club, another thing that our summer programs offer is swimming lessons. A lot of kids might not be able to have the chance to go and have their swimming lessons for multiple different reasons, so the fact that we’re able to provide that, and now a lot of kids are learning how to swim and they feel comfortable and they’re confident in swimming. I think that’s really amazing, too. A lot of different opportunities from somebody that grew up very broke, me seeing the stuff that the kids are able to do because we partner with other organizations or because of the grants and the different funding that we’re able to do or get, they go to these amazing places, even hours away, these awesome museums, these IMAX theaters, they go to Fun City, they go to zoos, they go to a lot of different stuff that honestly, I never had the chance to do as a kid, and maybe some of those kids also, their parents would never be able to take them, so the fact that they’re getting that opportunity. It’s amazing, and they’re learning so much, too.

RaQuisha Harrington:

That exposure and possibility in enrichment activities are very, very important for us to ensure that kids have, or mainly kids, but even their parents sometimes, have the opportunity to participate as well, and we know as a parent, and that being said, that sometimes it is just not in our reach to be able to take our kids to certain places or we are not knowledgeable in that, so to know that your child is surrounded by adults who are supervising them and ensuring that they’re able to go. You don’t have to worry about transportation, but you get to live vicariously through your child, for them to come back and tell you about their experience is amazing, and we are so thrilled that we have the opportunity to do that. As Bella mentioned, every day knowing that we are reaching at least 400 kids easy, they’re enrolled in top tier, high quality programming every day. We have some of the highest ratings in the state of Iowa. Knowing that we serve this diverse population is something to celebrate. Again, this 50 fest is just that. It’s the tip of the iceberg to definitely share. We’ve done a lot and we are right here in the community and some people may not know about us, but we’re trying to make sure everybody knows about us.

Bella Arredondo:

And maybe we can help you, too. Even if you don’t think that you fall into any of the categories that we said that we help, maybe we can. Even Chastity mentioned, we try to keep our doors open and there’s so many different things that, like I just said, you might think that we can’t help you, but you never know.

RaQuisha Harrington:

Or you can help us.

Bella Arredondo:

Or you can.

RaQuisha Harrington:

You can bring your skills into our center and help.

Bella Arredondo:

Exactly.

RaQuisha Harrington:

We have kids that are musically talented, and they want to take music lessons and so forth. There’s plenty of opportunities to connect and to provide programming ideas, and we’re all for it. If we can provide the space or whatever it is, we definitely are willing to do that.

Amy Wu:

Yeah, for sure. I think it’s very touching or very moving to hear about how connected or interwoven your community is, especially also as a person of color who grew up in predominantly white Iowa, it could be very isolating, and so all the programming that you’re putting on, it feels very much you’re doing life together like it’s a family. It’s very intimate. You have a strong network in a foundation, so that’s really awesome to hear, and you guys touched on a lot of the new events that you guys are putting on as [inaudible 00:26:51], but are there any last plugs on upcoming events and/or maybe more details on the 50th anniversary celebration?

Chastity Dillard:

We have, like I said, that 50th anniversary celebration, you will not want to miss it. We have eight different performances showcasing the cultures that we have within our programs and within our staff. It’s going to be from one to five, lots of fun, lots of good food, at Mercer Park. Sorry, at Mercer Park, free entry. You don’t have to pay anything. Well, you just come and there will be different samples of different stuff that you can try for food, but there’s going to be stuff that you could purchase as well and you won’t want to miss out on that because there’s going to be a lot of good, different stuff.

And we also have our Hallow Ranch event coming up, not to take away any importance for this event, but I know the University of Iowa, they really help us with that. We partner with the athletic department and they come and they put on a haunted house. Our entire Pheasant Ridge center, our entire upstairs, turns into a haunted house, and the kids absolutely love it. We have kids lined up at the door, a long, huge line, and it’s really amazing to be able to put that on for the community and scare the kids a little bit. We have a lights on option for kids for about an hour and a half, and then we have a lights off option for the older kids and for whoever else thinks that they can really pull through with it. That’ll be really fun. That one’s going to be on October 14th from 4:30 to 6:30.

RaQuisha Harrington:

And we can definitely use volunteers for that.

Chastity Dillard:

For all of these events, so let us know.

Amy Wu:

Well, awesome. Thank you guys so much for answering these questions so insightfully and letting us know exactly what NCJC neighborhood centers of Johnson County is all about. For our last question, we have a fun question. This doesn’t have to be related to NCJC, but it can be if you want it to. What’s one thing that you thought you knew about work life or anything that you were later wrong about?

RaQuisha Harrington:

Well, as a parent, I would say the older that growing up thought you want to be grown, independent and you have influence for everything, but I think the older I get, some days I’m just say, “I want to be a kid again”, so I wouldn’t have all the responsibilities and so now typical with kids is like, “Oh, I just want to be a grownup”. I’m like, “No, you really don’t want to be a grownup. Stay a kid for as long as you possibly can and embrace it,” but in saying that, even the older you get, the more you realize that you still need people no matter the age, no matter where you go in life, you’re going to meet people that are going to resemble or remind you of people that instill the best value in you as a young person. No matter where you go, as an adult, you’re still going to run into that and you need that. You need community, need people. You can’t do everything on your own, and I’m just blessed now to have, and be surrounded by people who I can depend on to help me as well, so that’s something that I passed on to kids.

Chastity Dillard:

I’m going to piggyback off of that slightly and say, I just remember as a child or a teenager thinking that once you hit your 30s, you know everything and then very quickly realizing that being an adult means that you are okay with completely learning new things every single day as you grow, and that’s really what growing up is. That’s the first thing I thought of.

Bella Arredondo:

Again, I guess just kind of piggybacking off of both of what they’re saying. It’s just also realizing that there’s always going to be things that you have to change about yourself. There’s always ways to improve. Nobody’s perfect, first of all. You’ll never get there, but just the fact, if you’re trying to be as the best person and the best version of yourself that you can be, that’s all you can do. Be the best version and genuinely try. Don’t just be that kind of person that just like, oh yeah, or puts it off and says that they’re doing all this. No, actually put that work into yourself and that’s all you can do. That’s amazing already in itself.

Amy Wu:

Well, awesome. Those are really insightful answers to our fun question. Thank you guys, once again, thank you once again, Bella, Chastity, and RaQuisha, and definitely we will be looking forward to the 50th year anniversary celebration. Thanks so much for sharing all about NCJC.

RaQuisha Harrington:

Thank you.

Bella Arredondo:

Thank you so much for having us.

Lauren Lavin:

And that’s all for today’s episode. We hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as we did recording it. If you’re interested in connecting with NCJC, head over to ncjc.org and over to the Connect With Us tab, and there, you’ll have options to donate or if you want to connect with them for volunteer purposes, you can reach out through the website as well. This episode was hosted and written by Amy Wu and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and you would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health, have a suggestion for our team? You can reach us at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.