Children's Bureau Family Center at Magnolia Place, Los Angeles

The Magnolia Community Initiative (MCI) is a ground-breaking model for large-scale community mobilization and transformation where children, living in the most vulnerable neighborhoods, break all records of success in their education, health milestones, the nurturing they receive from their family, and the economic stability of their family. This is an innovative collaborative effort of over 70 faith based and community groups, organizations and public agencies, dedicated to improving outcomes for children in a five square mile (500 blocks) area crossing the Pico Union, West Adams and the North Figueroa Corridor neighborhoods just south west of downtown Los Angeles. The Initiative's key strategy is to build neighborhood resiliency and civic engagement; it goes beyond the traditional multi-service strategy. Currently, these communities have 35,000 children and youth of which 10,000 are under five years of age. Today 65% of the children live in poverty, 35% are obese, 40% enter kindergarten unprepared, and 40% will fail to graduate on time from high school. There is a high rate of child abuse, child neglect and spousal abuse that devastates the future for these children and families. The MCI approach uses the families themselves as the vehicle for creating neighborhood resiliency. The families are in partnership with community-based organizations, government and philanthropy. In a County as large as Los Angeles, it is virtually impossible for programs to keep up with service demand for individuals and families. Therefore, it is the investment in the development of social and organizational networks that affords the best opportunity to address the scope and scale dimensions necessary to achieve sustainable success. MCI is pioneering because to achieve its mission, it unites the Community, County, and City in order to strengthen individual, family and neighborhood Protective Factors by increasing social connectedness, empathy, community mobilization, and access to needed supports and services. The 70 high level government and private sector partner organizations of MCI join forces under a shared vision for the transformation of this community through a network. This network relies entirely on community entities that come together voluntarily to secure a shared outcome.