Unify Greater Buckeye

The Unify Greater Buckeye Network
"Many Neighborhoods, One Community"
NP3's perspectives, engagement and learning

NOTE: The best source for a comprehensive perspective on the work of the Unify Greater Buckeye Network will soon be found at A Greater Buckeye, a communications platform for community-centered journalism being stewarded by Julian Khan and his colleagues at Neighborhood Connections. This webpage spotlights NP3's perspectives and role.

Greater Buckeye is a community on the east side of Cleveland that includes the neighborhoods of Buckeye, Woodland Hills, Larchmere, Shaker Square, CHALK and Ludlow. NP3 is thrilled to have joined in partnership with over 40 community-based associations in early 2025 to build on the rich legacy of decades of community building efforts in this area. Together we have formed the Unify Greater Buckeye Network. With our strategic pivot at NP3, the Unify Greater Buckeye Network will be our exclusive focus for the foreseeable future, enabling a deep dive and immersion into the complex and steady work of bridging across social differences in a single community. We aspire for Greater Buckeye to be a demonstration zone of "transformative interdependence."

Participants at the inaugural Greater Buckeye Neighbor Festival engage with each other while studying a map at the learning space. September 2026.

The vision of the Unify Greater Buckeye Network is to create a thriving, unified multiracial community where everyone feels a sense of belonging and voice. This network of organizations and neighbors across the divides of race, class, age, and geography represents the next chapter of decades of intentional work to build relational trust and demonstrate concrete outcomes that benefit the entire community, particularly including historically-marginalized residents and community members.

Greater Buckeye is abundant in rich history and community-led activity, but is deeply fragmented and divided. NP3 has been working intensively in the Woodhill-Buckeye neighborhood in Greater Buckeye for more than six years, serving as the lead coordinator for the Woodhill-Buckeye Choice Neighborhoods Initiative redevelopment project. Starting in early 2025, we strengthened our partnership with local nonprofit Neighborhood Connections and together began working with neighborhood leaders across the Greater Buckeye community. With local, state and federal investments coming to Greater Buckeye, we believe it is critical to activate the community to help direct the funds and to co-create the neighborhood they want and deserve.

Unify Greater Buckeye Network Launch: Safety meeting May 2025

Our partnership with Neighborhood Connections is longstanding and very special. Our organizations are different in many ways, but we share a belief in the power of people to shape and transform their own communities. We believe in the power of networks, building trust, and the value of each human we encounter. Together, and with so many others, we are working to unify Greater Buckeye.

This work is funded in part by a grant from the funders collaborative New Pluralists, a group “investing together in a culture of respect and belonging for all”. We were chosen in spring 2026 as one of seven collaborations across the country working to bring people together across class divides. We are excited to be part of this cohort of practitioners learning together.

Community members gather at a Neighbor Night hosted by Neighborhood Connections.

Following are some examples of the work we’re all doing together:

1. Culture Building. Fostering an aspirational, joy-led, asset-based, healing-centered culture marked by curiosity, authenticity and accountability is central to everything we do. We are starting within our own organizations and co-creating, with community leaders, a cohort model to elevate ripples of this mindset to every corner of Greater Buckeye.
2. Communications Alignment. The Greater Buckeye neighborhood with a population of just over 16,000 is served by numerous local newsletters, newspapers and e-blasts. Neighborhood Connections is spearheading an effort among community stakeholders to bring all that information into one place, eventually to be hosted at A Greater Buckeye. The effort started with a community survey seeking input about how people get and would like to get information. This site will include a shared community calendar, association descriptions, stories, and restorative journalism.
3. NeighborsConnect! Through a Byrne federal grant from the Department of Justice, the City of Cleveland purchased Ring cameras to be installed in the Greater Buckeye community to help deter crime and help solve incidents. Rather than simply hand out cameras, and reinforce a surveillance-first mindset, NP3 and Neighborhood Connections created the NeighborsConnect! program to elevate block-level neighboring as a safety strategy. Cameras have been used as incentives for neighbors to commit to a joint approach to watching out for their block. Neighbors meet each other, identify ways they can improve safety on their street, and learn about a healing-centered approach - all before cameras are distributed. They work together to determine which homes receive the cameras.
4. E. 130th Street Working Group. NP3 and Neighborhood Connections were invited by a local leader and a pastor to organize community members to address significant safety concerns on a single block of E. 130th Street that had been a problematic safety hot spot for several years. Together, we’ve collaborated with city leadership, law enforcement and local stakeholders to engage business owners, increase security presence, and help shape future development opportunities. A seven-block target area has been established by Holy Grove Missionary Baptist church for resident engagement and support.
5. Organizational Development and Tenant Engagement Coaching. The Morelands Group is a small but mighty local grassroots organization committed to preserving, protecting, and advocating for the residential apartment corridor of the Shaker Square community on the east side of Greater Buckeye. NP3 has worked closely with their Steering Committee and volunteers for over a year to support their organizational development and tenant engagement as they grow and intensify their vital work.
6. Local Coordination of national catalytic investment. The Saint Luke’s Foundation has funded the Partnership for Equitable and Resilient Communities (PERC) to help advance a community-led collective impact initiative across Greater Buckeye. PERC is a justice venture fund on a mission to transform multigenerational Black and Brown futures. NP3 and Neighborhood Connections have been selected, along with New Era Cleveland and local leader Bob Render, to serve as the Coordination Team on the ground in Cleveland collaborating with PERC.
7. Greater Buckeye Neighbor Festival. This inaugural event in fall 2026 was a celebration of neighboring, bringing together the various neighborhoods of Greater Buckeye as one community. It included a youth area (with bumper cars, roller skating, tie dying, painting and more), learning space, opportunities to learn about resources in the community from over 30 organizations in attendance, and of course food trucks. Over 600 neighbors came together to recognize the power that comes from community.
8. New Headquarters for the Local Foundation. The Saint Luke’s Foundation has been serving the Greater Buckeye community for nearly thirty years. They have been based on the 5th floor of the former Saint Luke’s Medical Center, but have made the strategic decision to build a new, ground-level headquarters in the heart of the community, across from the former Woodhill Homes Estate. After an extensive community engagement process, they selected City Architecture to design the new building and campus. NP3 is part of the City Architecture team and will lead the community engagement work as the design unfolds, intentionally engaging local youth, neighbors, and other stakeholders.