Youth Resources for Greater Dudley

While rummaging around the internet, we turned up this document, published just last month, Neighborhood Briefing Document: Greater Dudley [2.5MB pdf]. It is published as Issue 58, August 2010, of the Emmanuel Research Review.

From the table of contents page:

"The Greater Dudley Neighborhood Briefing Document was researched and written by Rudy Mitchell for the Youth Violence Prevention Funder Learning Collaborative, with funding provided by the State Street Foundation. Design by Grace Lee. Layout by Steve Daman."

The work is copyrighted, 2010, by the Youth Violence Systems Project, and performed under the aegis of the Urban Ministry Resources of the Emmanuel Gospel Center.

Running to 64 pages, the paper is a background document intended for "urban pastors, leaders, and community members in their efforts to serve their communities effectively" [cite]. It provides a twelve-page history of Roxbury, from the birth of John Craft in 1630 to the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan (2004) [21MB pdf from the BRA].

For the document's purpose, the author clips Roxbury Highlands in half, including only the census tracts north of Cedar Street in the Greater Dudley study area (pdf page 17), though on the east side of Washington Street, Greater Dudley stretches beyond Malcolm X Park to Elmore Street.

The study details characteristics of the population (trends and ethnic/racial composition using Roxbury data as a whole; age, language, family structure, and economics and income from US Census tract data) and housing (owner-occupancy, also from Census data).

Then community institutions are enumerated and youth-oriented programs briefly described: the 42 Churches and Religious Institutions, plus the three convents and two mosques, the twelve schools (plus Gordon-Conwell's Center for Urban Ministerial Education, Northeastern University, and Roxbury Community College, and mistakenly mapping the Timilty School in Dudley Square in addition to its actual location in Eliot Square), the 29 Community Organizations and Programs, and the five Neighborhood Organizations.

Some Boston Police Department Youth Crime Statistics (2008) are given, concluding with a brief survey of Community Newspapers and Media and a two-page bibliography. Together with the newspapers and radio station, Both Ends of Dudley and Jonas Prang are the only two blogs listed.

Other Boston neighborhood studies for Uphams Corner, Bowdoin/Geneva, Grove Hall, South End/Lower Roxbury, and Morton/Norfolk are available at the EGC web site.

The first photograph, perhaps it aptly could be titled "The Three Young Men," was taken by Chase Grogan, Roxbury Presbyterian Church. The second, taken from page 4 of the Briefing Document, is an original oil painting by John Ritto Penniman (c. 1782-1841) of Meetinghouse Hill, Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1799. Art Institute of Chicago.