By Daisjah Brown
Introduction
As a second-year Master of Social Work candidate at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, I joined the NP3 team as a Research Assistant for my second field placement. With a background in community engagement and event planning, I was eager to jump in when the opportunity arose to support the Greater Buckeye Neighbor Festival. Leading volunteer recruitment and engagement for the event invited me to experience firsthand the passion, creativity, and drive of the Greater Buckeye community, an experience that inspired this perspective on neighboring and the festival.
Celebrating Neighboring
Neighboring is typically used as an adjective and is defined as the relationship between spaces, neighborhoods, or homes (i.e., neighboring communities). But what happens when you use it as a noun and give intention to how you nurture and grow those relationships? For us, neighboring is a conscious act of building and maintaining those relationships between people, neighborhoods, groups, and institutions, often across lines of class, race, or geography.
There has been a rich legacy of community-building in the Greater Buckeye area dating back to the work of the Buckeye Woodland Community Congress and more recently by groups like Neighborhood Connections and H.E.A.L. In early 2025, NP3, along with our colleagues at Neighborhood Connections, brought together over 40 community-based organizations to form the Unify Greater Buckeye Network and support the next chapter of this legacy work. This community includes the neighborhoods of Buckeye, Woodland Hills, Larchmere, Shaker Square, CHALK, and Ludlow. The network's vision is to create a thriving, unified, multiracial community where everyone feels a sense of belonging and voice that bridges class, race, and geography. On September 25, 2026, the Unify Greater Buckeye Network took a step toward turning that vision into reality.
The Greater Buckeye Neighbor Festival was born from the Network's desire to celebrate, educate, and activate local residents. Led by project manager Sarah Pounder of Neighborhood Connections and LaRick Calhoun of the 2Excel group, the event aimed to create a welcoming, neighborhood-centered environment to strengthen relationships, mobilize community power, unify all parts of the area, foster collective impact among residents, businesses, and organizations, and highlight opportunities for youth across Greater Buckeye.
Nearly 600 attendees came to the event, including residents, over 30 local community groups and nonprofits, volunteers, and vendors. The joyful afternoon featured engaging activities for all residents, including artists, a youth space with bumper cars and roller skating, local community vendors, and a Learning Space to document Greater Buckeye: Past, Present, and Future.
Participants visited local food trucks to pick up famous tacos from Barrio, grab a best-selling soul roll and fries from Zanzibar, or indulge in nostalgia and grab a hot dog from the hot-dog cart. They could also stop by Pucker216 for a glass of ice-cold, fresh lemonade. Then, they were invited to walk around and talk with folks from the local groups. The kids had many activities to share how they view neighboring, from coloring pages to creating mosaic tiles, plus roller skating and tie-dying. Youth worked together to create unity, love, and joy.
In the Learning Space, attendees interacted with art pieces symbolizing collective action and community voice. Overall, participants noted that people of Greater Buckeye value creating a shared vision, a safer neighborhood, and hard work. As the participants noted, “It takes a village” to build a unified community. Yet, they also said we must work together to build trust, collective action, and love.
In the Learning Space, participants also created an interactive timeline documenting Greater Buckeye's growth over time and the future they want to claim. As Ifeoma Ike, afrofuturist and founder of Pink Cornrows, noted, “We can’t just focus on what we don’t want to be; we need to define who we deserve to be.”
Participants set a clear vision of what Greater Buckeye deserves to be. To them, Greater Buckeye deserves safer streets and adequate lighting; they deserve to be the safest neighborhood in all of Cleveland; they deserve to create new businesses to grow their personal and community capital; and they deserve to have the “Most desirable place to live, work and play.”
By the end of the event, residents felt more connected to their neighbors and community; more informed about neighborhood resources and organizations; more inspired to participate in local initiatives; and more inspired by Greater Buckeye's creativity. They left with ideas to shape the future of neighborhood efforts. It was an investment in community connection, resident leadership, and neighborhood pride.
Now, you might be wondering what comes next to refine and execute this collective vision. The Greater Buckeye Neighbor Festival was just one part of a larger, collective vision for the neighborhood. From here, NP3 is using feedback from the Learning Space to generate next steps in collaboration with our colleagues at Neighborhood Connections.
We also challenge you to think about what neighboring means to you. How can we support a shared vision while also building trust, collective action, and love? After this, it’s time to get active and promote your vision of neighboring. Start small: meet with a few neighbors on your block and consider expanding.