Westside Communities Alliance

A partnership between Atlanta's westside communities and institutions of higher education.

Rise Up Atlanta Event in Ashby Circle Playlot

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On Tuesday morning, September 17th 2013, as a part of Rise Up Atlanta, hard-working volunteers coordinated by Park Pride showed up to revitalize Ashby Circle Playlot.

The whole volunteer crew!

Completed work includes:

  • Sanding and painting the playground
  • Removing invasive species from the perimeter of the park
  • Planting native species
  • Installing wattles to prevent soil erosion caused by stormwater run-off
  • Building birdhouses

Volunteers included:

  • Cheerleaders, players, and staff from the Atlanta Falcons;
  • Akamai Technologies staff for Danny Lewin Community Cares Day
  • Staff from YP

The next Rise Up Atlanta event in the Westside will be held on Tuesday, October 29th in Washington Park. Find more information here: http://www.handsonatlanta.org/HOC__Volunteer_Opportunity_Details_Page?id=a0CA000000ReePFMAZ

Mulching and sanding/painting the playground!

Read the story from the Atlanta Falcons.

See more pictures in our album and in Park Pride’s album.

Organizers of Ashby Rise-Up
From left:
Kendyl Moss, Vice President of Community Relations for Atlanta Falcons
Christi Jackson, Executive Director of The Conservancy at Historic Washington Park
Gwen Mason, Associate Director of Training Operations at YP
Gloria Smith, Resident of Washington Park
John Ahern, Volunteer Manager with Park Pride

Washington Park Community Service with GT OMED Students

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Early on a Saturday morning, 12 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Georgia Tech students – OMED (Office of Minority Educational Development) Challenge counselors with Andre Dickens, Assistant Director of Outreach Initiatives with OMED – met at Ashby Circle Playlot ready to volunteer with the Washington Park Community Club and Neighborhood Association, led by Christi Jackson. Some volunteers even walked from Tech’s campus to be there.

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The first order of duty was to canvass the Washington Park neighborhood to complete a survey of: vacant properties, senior citizens, pet-owners, home-owners v. renters, and structures with fire damage.

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After canvassing, the students began cleaning up the park. Located near a ravine, the park is plagued with stormwater surges rushing through the area. Many of the tree roots suffer are exposed from soil run-off and the grassy areas are littered with broken glass and debris making it unsafe for actual play. West Atlanta Watershed Alliance arranged mulch to be delivered and students covered the exposed roots to provide more stabilization. Other students worked to pick up trash, broken glass, and some interesting car parts that were found on the playground.

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See the entire photo album on our Facebook page

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Northside Drive Transit Corridor

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Professor Mike Dobbins, former Commissioner of Planning and Community Development for the City of Atlanta, led a studio through Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture creating a corridor plan for Northside Drive. Dobbins talks about Northside Drive as a major thoroughfare for the city with the ability to reconnect historic neighborhoods, the business district, as well as the east and west sides of town. 17 civil engineering and planning students spent Fall semester researching the sites in the area, attending community meetings, drafting potential plans, and presenting them to city and civic representatives. Visit the studio’s website for more information.

View the:

Executive Summary

Dobbins Fall 2013 Studio Description

Dobbins Spring 2014 Studio Description

Northwest Community Alliance Meeting

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Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation

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We want to thank Mike Koblentz, Chairman of the Northwest Community Alliance for organizing a forum on Wednesday March 20th to discuss the new Falcons stadium project (the fourth meeting the group has had in the past 2 years on this topic). Koblentz was able to give a warm welcome to all attendees as a well as a very honest synopsis of the fast-tracked City Council vote. The forum allowed Penelope McPhee and John Bare, President and Vice President of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to share a bit about the Foundation’s background and role in the new stadium and the community members to ask questions. The first to ask were representatives from the communities in closest physical proximity to the possible sites: Vincent Jones, President of English Avenue Neighborhood Association; Yvonne Jones chair of NPU-L; Suzanne Bair, President of Marietta St Artery Association; Jim of Castleberry Hill;

InGirls Visit to Georgia Tech

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On Friday February 22, 2013 46 female eighth-grade students interested in math and science from Joseph Emerson Brown and John F. Kennedy middle schools, from West End and Vine City respectively in the Westside, visited Georgia Tech to get a taste of college life. The event took place as a partnership between Westside Communities Alliance, a joint venture with Georgia Tech’s IAC and College of Architecture led by Dr. Sheri Davis-Faulkner and Mackenzie Madden in the Office of the Dean, and InGirls, an organization focused on increasing college acceptance among underserved female students.

WCA Staff Sheri Davis-Faulkner with InGirls from Brown Middle School.

Undergraduate students Danielle Sharpe and Cecili Reid and PhD candidate Nettrice Gaskins welcomed them to campus in the morning. We sent them off in small groups for various activities. Some attended classes in the School of Economics and School of Literature, Media, and Culture. Others attended robotics, public participation, and augmented reality demonstrations in the GVU (Graphics, Visualization, and Usability) Center, while others visited the EarSketch recording studio in the School of Music. We had lunch in the Presidential Suite of the Bill Moore Student Success Center overlooking the football stadium while Chris Briggs, from the Office of Admissions discussed why Georgia Tech is such a wonderful school and how to prepare for admittance.

Student volunteers from IAC Ambassadors, IAC Student Advisory Board, Delta Sigma Theta, FirstGen, JumpStart, OMED, and the courses NearPeer and Science, Technology & Race then took them on informal tours of campus and provided the girls an opportunity to ask questions in a smaller setting. Some highlights of their tours were Tech Rec and the Campus Recreation Center. Several of the volunteers also gave the girls their contact information to continue serving as a college liaison. The girls left excited about the prospect of attending Georgia Tech, something that may have seemed unattainable before this visit, short term goal of the program. We look forward to an ongoing relationship with the InGirls program to ultimately increase acceptance and admittance from our neighboring communities.

PhD Student Nettrice Gaskins demonstrates Augmented Reality.