Social-Service Leader Recognized for Collaborative Work in Poor Neighborhood

The Martha O’Bryan Center, a nonprofit that provides education, child-rearing advice, and many other services to the poor, is intimately acquainted with the people it serves: The organization’s offices are in Cayce Place Homes, the largest public-housing neighborhood in Nashville.

The center, which turns 120 next year and was named for a social-service pioneer, serves approximately 9,000 people whose average annual income is less than $6,000.

While the services and programs the group offers help residents work to lift themselves from poverty, Marsha Edwards, the center’s executive director, says the most important thing her group does is connect people to one another.

“When people want to change their life in some way, they need to have a social network with like-minded people,” she says.

Ms. Edwards’s skill in building such networks is a chief reason she won the 2013 Peter B. Goldberg Aramark Building Community Executive Leadership Award. The prize, given by the United Neighborhood Centers of America and the Alliance for Children and Families, comes with a $40,000 award provided by Aramark.

Bev Dribin, vice president of community relations at Aramark, says it was Ms. Edwards’s “collaborative approach to community change” that impressed the contest’s judges.

Seeking Models

Ms. Edwards has led the center since 2001. Five years into her tenure, she became curious about what other neighborhood organizations were doing to improve the communities they served, especially children.

She drew inspiration from an award-winning group that has received national attention for the comprehensive services it offers to young people.

Ms. Edwards visited the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York in 2006. The trip, she says, inspired her to better integrate her group’s services to meet the needs of both kids and adults, and to recruit more local partners.

To advance that goal, the center has won a $500,000 Promise Neighborhood grant from the Department of Education to help extend the center’s work to nine local schools.

But the hallmark of the O’Bryan Center’s work is its Tied Together Parenting Program. The effort, which shows parents how best to get involved in a child’s education, health, and safety, came out of concerns voiced by older Cayce residents about the quality of parenting by the younger generation.

The nine-week program, Ms. Edwards says, not only strengthens child rearing but has also given parents the skills they need to solve neighborhood conflicts that arise.

When residents who attended the program in the past expressed alarm at the rise of aggressive behavior, the center directed families to Lipscomb University for a master’s-level course on conflict management. The first session was paid for by a donor. Since then, the university has recruited faculty members and graduate students to donate their time to offer free classes to residents.

Ms. Edwards says all the participants completed the course, even though many of them did not finish high school.

Rather than stepping in to help residents solve their problems, the center prefers to direct them to resources that enable them to become self-sufficient. Helping residents achieve their own solutions is key to the center’s success.

“We’re just a partner in the process,” Ms. Edwards says.

For all its success, the Martha O’Bryan Center faces some tough challenges ahead.

Cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that took effect this month will soon have a big impact on the charity. Tennessee ranks among the top five states in the nation for food-stamp use. One in five residents receives a government subsidy to buy groceries.

The center plans to press its local member of Congress to urge lawmakers to restore the money that will be lost. Ms. Edwards says she will note that needy children can’t succeed in school unless their basic nutritional needs are met. In addition, the neighborhood where the center is based will change into a mixed-income development, a shift Ms. Edwards meets with optimism. She says the city’s mayor, Karl Dean, will tear down and replace the 720 units at Cayce and eventually double that number.

“This provides opportunity and maybe a new future,” she says.

No matter the outcome, Ms. Edwards hopes residents will continue to look to their neighbors for support.

“They need each other,” she says. “They don’t need institutions people or programs.”

About the Aramark Building Community Executive Leadership Award

Who gives the award: United Neighborhood Centers of America and the Alliance for Children and Families

How much: $40,000 award every year

Who it is named for: Peter B. Goldberg, who headed Families International, the parent organization of United Neighborhood Centers of America and the Alliance for Children and Families. He died in 2011.