Community starts with US and everything we do is Centered around this idea.

The Center is a catalyst for positive growth in Covington but our role is only one part of the equation. Our most important partner is YOU and the other residents of Covington.

How do we do it? We spark this growth by focusing on five intersecting program areas: Neighborhoods & Community, Creative Placemaking, Real Estate Development, Youth, and Financial Wellbeing.

Why do we do it? We are committed to helping people discover and develop their skills, find and use the resources they need, and discover partners who share their concern for the well-being of Covington.

What can you do? Our programs are all designed to help residents build on the great parts of Covington and to develop solutions to both individual and community issues. We can’t wait to meet you!

Our History

The Center began in 1976 when the Fourth Street Center and Downtown Neighborhood Center merged to become the Covington Community Center. In the late 1960s and early 1970s these two small neighborhood centers were created by separate churches in Covington. Both served the emergency needs of low income residents, provided recreation activities for youth and helped residents address community issues. The merger helped create a single, strong organization with a mission to serve those same needs.

From 1978 until 2000 we provided many of the same programs at our offices at 1008 Lee Street, on the west side of Covington. In the mid­1990s our programs started to focus more heavily on community development efforts and building a stronger network of resident ­led neighborhood groups.

In 2000, a move to 1650 Russell Street helped expand our impact even more. Our new facility became a city­wide meeting and training center to support residents’ efforts to improve their neighborhoods. In 2005, we changed our name to The Center for Great Neighborhoods of Covington to more clearly reflect our mission. In 2016, we moved to the Hellmann Creative Center, and while our location has changed, we remain committed to working with Covington neighborhoods to make them GREAT!

Culture Statement

Our culture is the underlying beliefs, assumptions, values, and ways we interact internally as a workplace, and externally through our community work and relationships. We proactively assess our internal systems and external programs to ensure that these statements are reflective of ourselves and our work.

We believe everyone has gifts, talents, insights, passions, and leadership to offer; and that these assets thrive in an environment of trust, accountability, support, and learning.

• We seek to identify the gifts in ourselves, each other, and our community so that we might best use these gifts in a manner that the individual, the organization, and the community thrive.
• We support individual passions by encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit. In employees and in residents we support new ideas by creating space, asking questions, and reciprocating commitment to the idea.
• We value accountability to ourselves, each other, the organization, and our community.
• We share leadership and decision-making power. We share power through co-creation and participatory decision-making that centers input from those closest to the problem.
• We are anti-racist and we actively work against systems of oppression. We acknowledge and strive to dismantle the internal, institutional, and structural barriers that exist to hold back oppressed populations.
• We strive for equity. We create and advocate for environments where everyone has the opportunity to attain their full potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of situations outside of their control, especially when these situations are connected to historical and contemporary marginalized groups related to a persons’ income, education, race/ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

How our Culture is reflected in our workplace:

Our team is made up of trustworthy, intelligent, and committed professionals. This allows a decentralized structure so that all members of our team hold power in the organization and play a core role envisioning our future.

Static evaluation models limit our ability to adapt quickly in the face of complexity. We designed a work model that allows us to continually innovate on what we are doing without the need for top-down approval.

We are accountable to each other and the community. We hold one another accountable by working as a team to review each other’s goals, accomplishments, and challenges of the past year, and to set new goals for the upcoming year.

We understand the work of community development is never complete and does not follow for a strict weekday, daytime schedule. We also recognize that employees are more present, clear-headed, and productive when they can balance their work, personal/family responsibilities, and individual passions. To this end, we allow for a 35 hour work week where each staff member can create their own schedule, prioritizing first the hours necessary to be successful in their role and second the office hours of Monday to Thursday, 9a-5p.