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Mission & Vision

DNDA 's Mission and Vision

Mission

DNDA’s mission is to engage residents, businesses, and institutions in creating a thriving Delridge.

Vision:

DNDA takes guidance from the vision for the Delridge Neighborhoods put forth by the Delridge neighborhood plan.  Key points include:  

  • Creating mixed-use nodes of activity along Delridge Way; 
  • Preserving housing affordability’ 
  • Creating linkages between Delridge and the Seattle Housing Authority's High Point garden community; 
  • Fostering and celebrating the cultural diversity of Delridge; and 
  • Reinforcing the environmental quality of the Longfellow Creek watershed and the extensive greenbelts in the area.
In 2008 and 2009, DNDA convened engaged hundreds of people and organizations in Delridge to build a community action plan for the King County Food and Fitness Initiative.  That effort produced a vision for
 
“Vibrant communities that support access to locally grown, healthy, affordable food and safe and inviting places for physical activity and play—for everyone.”
 
In 2009, DNDA's leadership refreshed the organization's strategic plan.  The planning process produced three frames for a community vision:  
  1. Pride and sense of place
  2. A model for regional equity and equitable development
  3. Reversing historical underinvestment
 
Pride and sense of place for Delridge
  • Delridge neighborhoods have pride and a sense of place (15 years ago, a place called Delridge didn’t really exist).  
  • Delridge is a crucial part of the broader West Seattle peninsula (we need to work to overcome any sense of separation).  
  • Building on existing asset such as green and natural spaces
  • Arts and Culture as a basis for neighborhood identity and economic vitality
  • Ethnic and Racial diversity as an asset
  • Neighborhood residents exercise effective grassroots leadership
  • “concentrated nodes of activity” – could be the ones in the neighborhood plan or others such as the Boren School site, soon to be vacated by the school district
 
Delridge as a model for regional equity and equitable development
DNDA working with diverse community members, will develop and adopt strategies for equitable development.  Some examples of issues to be addressed in these strategies include: 
  • smart growth/new urbanism/Transit Oriented Development…
  • food and fitness
  • green jobs/local hiring
  • civic engagement
 

“In the broadest sense, regional equity is a framework for social change that is nestled within, and inseparable from, the quest for economic and social justice in America. Regional equity brings a unique perspective to the broader equity movement: a deep understanding of how metropolitan development patterns structure the life chances and social and economic opportunities of residents, and the ways in which uneven spatial development reinforces old racial and class divides, while creating new ones. The goal is to ensure that everyone—regardless of the neighborhood in which they live—has access to essential ingredients for economic and social success: living-wage jobs, viable housing choices, public transportation, good schools, strong social networks, safe and walkable streets, services, parks, access to healthy food, and so on.”

- Angela Glover Blackwell: Regional Equity and the Quest for Full Inclusion
 
Addressing historic underinvestment
Problem: Delridge is a historically “underinvested” neighborhood. 
 
Material impacts: Underinvestment in the Delridge neighborhood has led to a number of issues, including:
• A shortage of economic opportunities (quality affordable housing, living wage jobs, crucial goods and services) for the neighborhood’s residents. 
• Significantly disparate health outcomes for the neighborhood’s residents (e.g. the highest rate of diabetes-related mortality in Seattle). 
• A shortage of public spaces where community could be built. 
 
Civic impacts: There is a relationship between the neighborhood’s relative ethnic and racial make-up and the historic underinvestment – i.e. redlining. Many residents of the neighborhood experience this set of dynamics as a lack of personal and institutional power. 
 
Solution: Neighborhood residents can take collective action to reverse the history of underinvestment. 
 
Material outcomes: quality affordable housing, community facilities that deliver needed services and serve as public gathering spaces; access to crucial goods and services (i.e. healthy affordable food); living wage job opportunities; safe inviting places to play…
 
Civic outcomes: A network of strong, resilient civic institutions owned and led by neighborhood members. An organized base of neighborhood residents and a cadre of grassroots leaders who represent them. Together, they exercise influence and power over decisions that affect their neighborhoods. 
 
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