Andrew Feil is a dedicated professional with a profound commitment to community transformation. As the Executive Director of Every Neighborhood Partnership (ENP), Andrew is at the forefront of activating, equipping, and mobilizing community members, organizations, and institutions to drive positive change in Fresno. A devoted husband to Denise Feil and a father of four boys, Andrew and his family call the vibrant Tower District of Fresno home. Beyond his leadership role at ENP, Andrew serves as adjunct faculty at Fresno Pacific University in the School of Humanities, Religion, and Social Sciences, bringing his wealth of experience to the academic sphere. Andrew's educational background includes a Bachelor's degree from Fresno Pacific University and a Master's degree from Bakke Graduate University in Social and Civic Entrepreneurship. His diverse skill set, honed through years of experience, positions him as a dynamic force in community development. Having transitioned from the role of Associate Director in 2015 to Executive Director in 2020, Andrew provides strategic leadership direction for ENP. He oversees the organization's partnerships, finances, and operations, ensuring its continued success in fostering positive community impact. Passionate about leveraging existing community assets, Andrew envisions a future where everyone possesses the ability to be decision-makers, contributing to the creation of healthy and thriving neighborhoods. In addition to his professional pursuits, Andrew enjoys staying active, gardening, indulging in literary pursuits, and supporting the Los Angeles Dodgers and Liverpool Reds.
Dear Ministry Colleagues,
God’s people in the Valley are responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Many of you are involved in relief efforts – too many to list here. But in our role as an equipping organization, we wanted to pass along a few strategic things we are aware of that might be helpful for you to know:
We are in the midst of unprecedented times. COVID-19 and the potential impact on our city, state, country, and the world is rising in awareness as well as the importance social distancing and other efforts to flatten the curve.
ENP is continually monitoring the situation and wanted to let you know how we can love our neighbors and especially those on the margins.
Word of Warning: Take the precations you feel you need to take. We are not medical professionals, but rather trying to give you options and ways to show Jesus like compassion during these times.
Let your neighbors know you are there for them! You can download and print this PDF and share it with them. If you want an editable version or want ENP to help you create one email gabrielle@everyneighborhood.org.
Thanks, Neighborhood Church for sharing your design.
Neighbor-COVID19
On February 22, 2020, the Fresno County Trauma and Resilience Network partnered with Every Neighborhood Partnership to bring awareness to the impact of childhood trauma in Fresno.
The vision behind these two mini-conferences is to gather community members to discuss and strategize ways to build connections between the health care system and other systems to better serve kids and families struggling with adverse conditions in their lives.
The first Trauma and Resilience Mini-Conference was held at the Butler Church and approximately 45 people — educators, mentors, parents, and students– were in attendance.
2019 was a year of growth! We added a few new programs- including Read Fresno and Resilient Playgrounds, deepened our existing work, and continued to pour into resident and young adult leaders. All of this growth is thanks to our partners like you!
Leadership is often envisioned as an individual leading a large group of people. This is an accurate vision of leadership, although it is not a holistic vision. For example, rarely mentioned in the same sentence is that of motherhood and leadership .
In 2019 ENP was blessed to journey with 60 mothers from Fresno who accepted the challenge of participating in one of two leadership cohorts hosted by ENP. These residents, we believe, are already leaders as they are already equipped with gifts, talents, and abilities. Through authentic engagement ENP facilitated pathways to future development and community engagement. No surprise to us, mothers are, without a doubt, leaders of their communities.
Resident Leader Cohort’s Graduation held at Arte Americas downtown.
ENP partnered with Fresno Housing Authority at Legacy Commons, which has been instrumental for strategic place-based development. This partnership has led to growth in the neighborhood association group and the development of an additional resident leadership cohort (CAN). It has also resulted in the installation of security doors on each of the 128 apartments in the complex.
As part of community development and creative place-making, ENP was successful in helping a local partner acquire a one-acre vacant property for the purpose of building a neighborhood park. ENP conducted the outreach for the park design and acted as consultant on a state-wide grant. ENP also supported a resident-led project with the Vang Pao Neighborhood Association “familias en accion” to ideate and install thirty art murals in the community. The Callejon mural/Mural Alley project serves as a walking path and activity zone for community members to enjoy. Blight and litter abatement has also gone down in that space.
A glimpse of the beautiful Mural Alley project led by “Familias En Accion” in Vang Pao.
Latin Dance Fitness is building resident leaders and healthier communities. Read this quote from one attendee: “With this class, I have lost 28 pounds (from November to January). This class is a positive place to work out without feeling judged. On days I go to class, I have more energy. I am in a better mood and it helps me relieve stress for a little while. In the class, I am out of my head and only focusing on the next move. Having bipolar, I often get stuck in my head and for an hour twice a week it’s nice to just be in the moment, focusing on the music and the moves. Spending time out of my apartment with positive people is such a good feeling”.
In 2019 Literacy Mentoring added 10 more schools, allowing us to impact over 300 additional students on a weekly basis. This is thanks to the partnership of 4 more churches and the newly added Read Fresno program with Fresno State. We have seen tremendous academic growth (students grew on average 443%), the building up of more young college student leaders, better supported teachers, and volunteers who are building real relationships with students, teachers, and families.
The LM program is also now in Spanish! We are able to work with kids in dual-immersion classrooms at both Centennial and Jackson elementary. One of the mentors Heidi White said “ I love it so much. I believe we are transforming lives by being in those classrooms.”
We have seen the gap close for students, especially when we have enough capacity (trained volunteers and supplies) to work with them in Kinder, 1st, and 2nd grade. This chart shows the classroom average of sight words known and the growth over the year.
This golf cart was created for the Winter Wonderland event at Williams Elementary by Read Fresno Mentors. Their love for their kids propelled them to work overtime and attend events outside of school hours!
We asked our students what they think in some key “Group think-tanks.” They said “it (literacy mentoring) makes me feel more smarter,” “I’m really happy they teach me and they help me learn about stuff” and “I want to tell her (my mentor) that I missed her and that I love her..” They also gave us new activity ideas- including adding playdough and car games.
Our Literacy Mentors come from many different places! For instance, at this training we had three parents, one pastor, one community member who found us online, and a college professor! It takes the whole community coming together if we’re going to see our kids succeed.
Read Fresno
# of Fresno State Community Members Involved as mentors: 49
# of hours of service provided by mentors:13,386.55$255,431.27 of Work Study awarded to students
Recreational Resilience is ENP’s unique framework for promoting and developing individual and community resilience in under-resourced neighborhoods. This framework incorporates Resilience-Based Trauma Informed practices from the most relevant fields of scientific research with fun and playful recreational activities that are facilitated through safe, supportive and caring adult relationships. Through our network of community partners, ENP coordinates these relational based activities in two primary categories: Community-Based and Campus-Based.
Our Community-Based programs take place outside of the regularly scheduled school day. Saturday Sports (SS), a drop-in recreation program takes place on regularly scheduled intervals on Saturdays and is our main community-based program. During 2019, our SS programs have provided enriching recreational and relational engagement to over 400 individual students each month. On average, over the course of the program year, we mobilize more than 5,000 community volunteer hours and serve over 17,000 sack lunches to students in these high need neighborhoods.
Our Campus-Based programs take place on elementary school campuses during the regular school day. FunFit PE is a unique project where college volunteers provide support to classroom teachers by delivering fun, engaging physical activity to elementary students during regularly scheduled PE classes. The FunFit PE projects include activities like Yoga Ed, Kid Dance, Parkour Fitness, and Beat the Odds Drumming, a social-emotional drum circle program. The FunFit PE projects have served over 800 students on five elementary school campuses.
ENP’s Resilient Playgrounds initiative includes college volunteers providing semi-structured recreational activities for elementary students during recess. Over the last two school semesters, Resilient Playgrounds has provided semi-structured recess for over 400 students at two elementary school sites. Through our campus-based programs, ENP has mobilized over 4,000 volunteer service-learning hours, providing essential personal and professional development opportunities for the next generation of professionals who will soon be working and leading many of our social institutions. Even more importantly, these future professionals are providing safe, nurturing adult relationships that ultimately help to support and meet the social-emotional and relational needs of students in our community.
These girls are keeping cool on a warm day, coloring in the shade with their Saturday Sports leaders at Susan B Anthony. Our Satrudays include more than just sports!
Kids from Heaton Elementary are being led in fun, structured PE activities by Fresno State students. We are building healthy kids and college student leaders!
One of ENP’s core staff values is to be a learner. We start with listening to our communities, reading books, articles, and news, and then test that information in the real world lab of our community. Information that we or others we find helpful we pass on. This is not a complete list, but sampling of the type of information that we shared in 2019 to our community partners, residents, churches, and volunteers.
Additionally, over 500 individuals have received specially designed trauma-informed training related to individual specialized fields such as Foster and Adoptive Care, Social Work, After School & Recreation Programing, and Mentoring.
Over the course of 2019 ENP has helped facilitate community conversations in the West Fresno elementary neighborhood. It started with school staff and community organizations near the school to eventually working with over 40 residents meeting on a monthly basis in the school cafeteria.
The first priority the residents had was the road and traffic conditions around the school site.
Click here to check out the August 2019 Newsletter.
St. Rest Community Economic Development Corporation is hiring a new Executive Director. Their mission is to develop and support community-based strategies that increase economic opportunity and improve the quality of life for a sustainable Saint Rest neighborhood.
This position would be hired as an independent contractor working, on average, 25 hours a week. The hourly rate of pay would be in the range of $20-25 an hour, depending on applicants experience.
Email artie@everyneighborhood.org with cover letter and resume.
Learn more by downloading the Job Description here or see below.
ENP Family,
As we enter the 2nd half of our 12th year as an organization, we once again celebrate the work that is happening all over our community on a weekly basis.
I am so proud of our ENP staff, our amazing volunteer partnership teams and all the partners we get to serve with on a regular basis. We have truly built a culture of love and service in our city that grows with each passing year.
Please consider joining us on Thursday, September 26th at 5:30pm for our 3rd Annual Fall in Love with Fresno banquet. It’ll be a time of celebrating, learning and hearing from those working in our school and neighborhoods.
You are personally receiving this because you’ve played a role with ENP in some capacity, be it a church volunteer, organizational partner, university student, resident volunteer, donor, business partner or in some other capacity. We have sold out in our first two banquets so make sure to buy your table or ticket soon!
Above you’ll see various ways to either sponsor, purchase a table or simply an individual seat. Whichever is best for you, we’ll appreciate greatly and we’ll be excited to see you there.
We truly appreciate you and the role you play in ENP’s work in the community.
Blessings,
Artie
Join the ENP team as our Neighborhood Development Coordinator.
Neighborhood Development creates place-based strategies that lead to self-sustainability, empowerment, and leadership development with residents and strategic partners to positively impact their communities. Discovering what people care about the most is the key to making our neighborhoods a better and a healthier place to live!
Email andrew@everyneighborhood.org with cover letter and resume.
Learn more by downloading the Job Description here or see below.
Accepting Resumes till June 15th.
Check it out here:https://conta.cc/2GzVLXb
Fresno’s a city that has many exciting moving parts. We have 2 strong health initiatives focused on making our community an overall healthier place to live. We have 2 vibrant youth and education initiatives that are working on developing ways to help our schools better serve our students and work with community-based organizations to help our youth thrive on and off our campuses. There’s a lot of work in building community and developing leadership with our residents. Workforce and Economic Development are high in the minds of those wanting to elevate those areas in our community.
