THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300414
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KURT KENT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 58 lines
Lana Pressley came looking for help in organizing her community. And Wednesday night she found some.
Pressley, president of the Villa Heights Civic League, found two volunteers and a fistful of ideas to lend oomph to her efforts. She was one of some 45 Norfolk neighborhood leaders who chalked up a list of almost two dozen actions to reduce crime.
The civic league presidents and other activists swapped ideas about problems and solutions at the first forum of the Neighborhood Network, a group hoping to foster communitywide dialogue on common issues. The group, meeting at the Huntersville Recreation Center, was tackling the top issue identified in a December survey of Norfolk's 138 civic leagues.
Pressley said her biggest problem was how to get people involved. The hard work in her neighborhood was getting her down. ``I don't want to move to Suffolk,'' she said.
But ``I'm really tired,'' she continued. ``People just don't want to get involved.''
Sympathetic comments from around the hall made it clear that the problem hit home with many of the leaders.
Bea Jennings of the Olde Huntersville Civic League advised that finding the ``hot buttons'' for each person would boost involvement. And once people get involved, better things will come.
``You'll find that if you have a lot of little successes, that leads to big successes.''
That was just the first of many suggestions that Pressley found helpful.
And she found volunteers.
Willie Barnes, president of the Norfolk Neighborhood Crime Prevention Coalition, offered to gather a group to go door-to-door in Pressley's neighborhood. That's a good way to find new community workers, agreed Tom Taylor, head of Citizens for SAVE - Stopping Acts of Violence with Education.
And Bev Sell of Estabrook volunteered to help with a newsletter.
Pressley plans to start a telephone tree and to work on setting up a crime prevention block watch. Everyone who spoke about the PACE community policing program agreed that it helps.
For one thing, it contributed to a drop in residential burglaries to 2,700 in 1995 from 3,300 in 1994, said Ed Rockefeller, a Norfolk police officer.
``I`m glad to be here because it helped to rejuvenate me,'' Pressley said. ``It gave me some energy that I was kind of lacking before I came in here.''
Such communication is one of the keys to community improvement, said Ken Grow of the Ingleside Civic League. Talk with your neighbors, he recommended.
That talk is essential, concluded Joshua Paige, meeting moderator and president of the Inner-City Federation of Civic Leagues. ``When you've got people next door and you don't know who they are, you're not a neighbor,'' he said.
``Crime does not set up store where there are neighbors.''
The next Neighborhood Network forum will focus on education, the second-ranking topic in the group's survey. The meeting, Aug. 7 at a location to be determined, will be moderated by Baxter Vendrick Jr. of the Northside Civic League. by CNB