A partnership between Atlanta's westside communities and institutions of higher education.
The Atlanta Housing Authority’s Housing Choice Voucher program waitlist will be open from March 15th – March 21st online at http://ahawaitlist.org/ or at the hotline: 1-855-242-7701.
The Westside Resource Center, located at 907 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, will host volunteers that week and expand their hours of operation to accommodate anyone wanting to sign up for the waitlist. 
Last month, 45 female students from Brown Middle School attended a STEM campus experience at Georgia Tech for the WCA’s annual OurGirls @ Tech event. Given Atlanta Public School’s new direction towards STEM and STEAM, the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts aims to create opportunities for exposure to local colleges and universities. While Brown Middle School is only a 12 minute bus drive away, many students are unfamiliar with Georgia Tech and all of its offerings.
This year, the girls attended demonstrations led by an all-female crew of students and staff. They stopped by the Clough Undergraduate Learning Center (CULC) to see the Urban Honey Bee Project led by Dr. Jennifer Leavey. The Technology Group visited the retroTECH to play with vintage computers, video games, and more. The Women in Electrical and Computing Engineering (WECE) demonstrated how to build a wind turbine out of everyday objects. Across campus. The Mathematics group learned how to code their own music songs using rhythm and beats with EarSketch.
The photo scavenger hunt took them to the water slide in the recreation center, a dining hall, the bowling alley, and several popular student hang-out spots on campus.
Catered lunch took place overlooking Historic Grant Field at Bobby Dodd Stadium in the Student Success Center, while the Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts spoke about the importance of their presence on campus. Jade Sims, from the Office of Admissions, used the GPA game to stress the importance of grades, extracurricular activities, and tailored admissions essays when applying to college. Current female student athletes talked about an appropriate study-life balances, camaraderie, and the diversity of scholarships at Tech.
The Westside Communities Alliance introduced a comprehensive interactive Data Dashboard for Atlanta on February 11th.
The WCA Data Dashboard serves as a one-stop shop for key data that is accessible to community stakeholders, researchers, local government agencies, and relevant foundations interested in sustainable Westside community development.
“We believe that this tool has the potential to encourage greater data-driven decision-making at the neighborhood and Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU) level in addition to supporting research and policymaking that addresses significant challenges in areas of education, economic development, transit and mobility, and public safety,” said WCA Associate Director Mackenzie Madden.
In its current form, the dashboard offers resources in seven categories: 1) Community Profiles, 2) Economic Development, 3) Education, 4) Public Safety, 5) All Data, 6) Historical Data, and 7) Resource Library.
Presently, the dashboard displays information for NPU’s K, L, and T – the three NPUs connected to the WCA – as compared to the City of Atlanta.
The dashboard is a user-friendly tool that: 1) draws upon available quantitative and qualitative data, 2) stores data collected for current and future research initiatives, 3) provides metrics for assessing the success of diverse engagement and intervention models, and 4) develops comprehensive reports to identify the impact of “anchor institutions” such as Georgia Tech on neighboring communities to highlight knowledge gaps.
The Data Dashboard project began in 2011 as a static Westside neighborhoods asset map created in conjunction with faculty in the Georgia Tech College of Architecture. Under the leadership of Dean Royster and her WCA leadership team, the first virtual tool was created in Fall 2013 by a group of graduate students in Dr. John Stasko’s Data Visualization class. That iteration mapped transit and walkability in the city. The platform also provided a heat map of census data that has since been transformed into the Big Data tool available today. Graduate Research Assistants in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts continued building the dashboard into its present form.
Katie O’Connell, MCRP 2015, was hired as the Project Manager for the Data Dashboard in Summer 2014. She began by researching similar platforms across the country and collecting relevant data for the city of Atlanta. During an Online Tools session of the WCA’s 2014 Community Studio, O’Connell was able to determine the basic pros and cons of existing resources such as the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Neighborhood Nexus, the U.S. EPA’s Enviromapper, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Several focus groups with Westside residents and stakeholders were held as various portals were designed to garner feedback on the usability of the dashboard.
The WCA staff has presented the dashboard at various conferences and symposia including The Center for Community Progress’ Vacant Properties Conference in 2015, Atlanta Studies Symposium, TEDx Atlanta, and the Georgia Tech Center for Urban Innovation.
The WCA Data Dashboard has been made possible through various stages of development in collaboration with entities at Georgia Tech including College of Architecture, College of Computing, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, the Center for Geographic Information Systems, and with funding from the Ford Foundation.
Please visit wcadatadashboard.iac.gatech.edu to explore the platform. Please use the hashtag #WCADataDashboard in social media settings, when referencing the tool.
Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of death and the most commonly diagnosed cancer among African-American women. The Westside Communities Alliance, of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech, in partnership with Susan G. Komen Greater Atlanta will sponsor a night out for 50 westside community residents and leaders for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. These women will be treated to a HEALing Dinner Party focused on breast health and FREE tickets to a play at the Ferst Center Theater.
This Friday, October 16th, our westside residents will meet at the Neighborhood Union Health Clinic on Sunset Avenue, a newly-opened location of the HEALing Community Center. A bus will transport them to the Ferst Center at Georgia Tech where they will be treated to a special dinner catered by local favorite Urban Cannibals. Susan G. Komen Greater Atlanta and the HEALing Community Center will discuss the importance of breast health and affordable healthcare options available in the westside communities. Participants will also have the opportunity to make appointments to receive mammogram referrals. Following dinner, attendees will enjoy the play Sister Outsider inspired by the writings and teaching of Audre Lorde, author of The Cancer Journals.
This event provides the unique opportunity to reach communities of color with textured narratives that speak to their experiences as women. Working with campus and community partners, and with generous support from Georgia Power, we seek to encourage more women of color to get breast health screenings, while also promoting general health and wellness in the areas we serve.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia has implemented a Drug Market Intervention (DMI) for the English Avenue Neighborhood. To date, DMIs have been successfully implemented in 36 other neighborhoods nationwide. With technical assistance from Michigan State University (via funding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance), the first steps of the process have already been completed. On June 3rd at Westside Works, the technical assistance team presented to a group of community stakeholders about the DMI and how to move further along in the process.
Upcoming Meetings:
Tuesday June 16th
The Phoenix Partnership: English Avenue Drug Market Initiative
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Lindsay Street Baptist Church – 550 Lindsay Street NW, Atlanta GA 30314
Monday June 22nd
The Phoenix Partnership: English Avenue Drug Market Initiative
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Pilgrim Baptist Church – 498 English Ave NW, Atlanta GA 30318
The official Call-In is scheduled for Tuesday June 30th at a location TBA.
See more resources at: http://www.dmimsu.com/