YCore Project Spotlight: The Nabe (with The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House)

Project Lead: Brandon Schow

Fellows: Julie Meng, Anna Abrams, Salil Doshi, Shreya Nimma

In Partnership With: Edward Hatter at The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House

Founded in 1907, The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House is a nonprofit organization that aims to strengthen community and individual well-being for southeast San Francisco residents. They offer programs designed to serve the most underrepresented communities in the Bay Area, including their summer day camp Summer in the City for K-5 youth, their Transitional Age Youth program that provides one-on-one mentorship to young adults age 16–25, and Peer Counseling for youth aged 10–21 in Juvenile Detention. Since their founding, they’ve helped countless individuals in the local community and beyond with the support of the city-wide cohort Neighborhood Centers Together.

YCore’s team of fellows — composed of Julia Meng, Anna Abrams, Salil Doshi, and Shreya Nimma led by PL Brandon Schow — partnered with this organization to develop an action plan for increasing engagement by developing a user tracking system to get and track users’ contact information when they visit “the Nabe.”

Impact of COVID-19:

In response to the recent developments of COVID-19, The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House has unfortunately been reduced to its bare minimum functions, though they are still helping distribute supplies for students and helping them transition to remote learning. Further, they have been cut off from their main sources of revenue — event space rentals — and are struggling to stay afloat.

As for YCore’s team, their plans have been substantially derailed, as most of the project revolved around user interviews in Potrero Hill. These were planned to be organic and in person, and also required the fellows to go out and meet people (the target audience is, by definition, disengaged). Unfortunately, the pandemic prevented them from doing this and thus multiple pivots had to be made. They’ve expanded their interviews to people outside of Potrero Hill who fit the desired demographic and are making efforts to update the website. The scoping of the project has changed, reducing the community engagement aspects and increasing tech touch on the website.

Help The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House in these trying times by donating here or directly to YCore at https://ycore.org/donate.