JaxPride is a voice, a liaison, a network. Advocacy of our mission and is the cornerstone of JaxPride. We
promote public policies that will make Jacksonville a more attractive
and vibrant place where people want to live and companies want to
thrive.
We work with citizens' groups to help them become effective advocates for making visual improvements in their areas. And,
we work with government officials to ensure that ordinances which
maintain Jacksonville's beauty are understood and enforced.
Guiding Principles:
JaxPride facilitates community visioning workshops, or Community
Charrettes in a particular area of the city.
We invite both residents and business owners of that area and encourage
open discussion regarding the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
affecting the visual appearance of their community. Participants work on a
vision plan for their community, and when the workshop is over we take
the ideas and compile them into a report with an illustrious plan for implementation. The objective of a Community
Charrette is to bring together interested stakeholders dedicated to the
thoughtful improvement of their community within Jacksonville. The finalized document is presented to
community leadership, including elected officials, as a guidebook for
redevelopment of the area that can be given to developers that are interested
in the area.
Junior Charrette Pilot Project
JaxPride is currently working with Ribault High School National Honor
Society students to design a beautification project at a focal area in the
neighborhood near the school grounds. At
the discretion of the students, the project is being designed in phases so that
each class can leave behind a legacy at their school.
The National Honor Society’s sponsor, Steven
Kelley, contacted JaxPride with this idea brought to him by his students who
wanted to act on the sense of pride they had for their school and the community
surrounding it. Once JaxPride decided to
become engaged in this project, we met with the students to help them identify a
location for the beautification project.
Then, JaxPride met with the students on four separate occasions to help
them brainstorm ideas and develop a design for the focal area.
During
the design phase of the project, the students named the project
location Trojan Plaza. To view the rendering of Trojan Plaza, please
click here.
The NIVP & NIVP, Jr. Program promotes visual awareness in the
community & classroom. This program
is offered to elementary, middle & high school students, as well as
neighborhood, civic and merchant’s associations. While each program educates the importance of
enhancing the beauty of Jacksonville’s landscape, they each have a unique
approach because of the difference in the age of its audience, but they both
aim to increase the quality of life of all Jacksonville residents through
education. Following the presentations,
ideas are typically discussed for beautification projects around their
neighborhood/school, which we help to implement with our volunteers and
assistance in gathering landscaping tools and materials.
In the NIVP program, JaxPride works with community leaders, associations
and residents to empower and encourage clean up activities. We educate neighborhood residents about
violations related to property safety, landscape, sign, and zoning codes. After the presentation of examples of these
violations and positive images, JaxPride accompanies the residents around their
neighborhood to identify violations, which are later conveyed to the City’s
code enforcement. As we survey the
neighborhood, common and/or focal areas are identified that can be
aesthetically enhanced. Once the
violations are entered into the City Service Request and Complaint System,
JaxPride tracks them to ensure that they are being processed in a timely
manner.
While
JaxPride serves the entire community, our NIVP program aims to beautify
visually unappealing areas of the community through education and increasing
public awareness. In doing so, our
audience generally encompasses people from communities that are rundown and
afflicted with visual unsightliness.
These communities are usually comprised of older neighborhoods with
elderly or low- to moderate-income residents that do not have the means to
maintain its visual appearance. When we
enter these communities, we work to instill a sense of pride in residents and
remind them that with hard work their community can be restored. With our assistance, residents learn to
recognize and report violations that negatively impact the quality of life of
their neighborhood before they become a nuisance.
The NIVP Jr. program is for younger aged groups and has a more focused,
elementary approach to litter prevention and clean up activities to their
immediate home and school surroundings. In
addition to JaxPride being on the Keep Jacksonville Beautiful (KJB) Commission
and assisting with clean-ups, we also partner with KJB in regards to the NIVP,
Jr. program. KJB provides us with
plastic litter bags that read “Don’t Trash Jacksonville”. JaxPride, in turn, fills the bags with
materials, such as coloring books with crayons and pencils, which portray our
mission of taking pride in their community, to give to the student
participants. Prior to passing out the
“goodie” bags, JaxPride makes a presentation depicting examples of positive and
negative images throughout Jacksonville of the impact that humans have on the
landscape and environment.
With approval of the Duval County School Board and endorsement from the Duval County Council of PTAs, JaxPride educates school-aged youth about the importance of litter control and enhancing the beauty of their landscape, which gives the students a sense of pride and the ability to make a positive impact in their community. By nurturing and educating our youth about the importance of little control and beautification, JaxPride’s NIVP, Jr. program lays the foundation to ensure that the future of Jacksonville will value to preserve and enhance Jacksonville’s quality of life. The NIVP, Jr. presentation caters to school-aged youth with consideration given primarily to their residence and the school they attend so that they can better grasp the concept.