BY GRETCHEN KEISER

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--To combat the deterioration of the Stewart Avenue neighborhood where she lives, Joyce Sheperd co-founded the Neighborhood Deputies, a group of volunteers trained to identify city code violations and to encourage violators to fix problems.

At a critical time in 1997, she needed a small grant to buy identifying garb for the volunteer deputies and to print a new supply of booklets on Code Enforcement Violation Rules and Procedures.

Applying to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, the Neighborhood Deputies were given $2,000 to help sustain the effort that had already begun to bear fruit in the Stewart Avenue neighborhood and to become a model for other neighborhoods.

The CCHD grant was fruitful, said Sheperd, in a telephone interview Nov. 5.

“You all came through for us with your grant money … At that point we were still campaigning with the city to see if they would help us … I have a lot of respect for (CCHD). I was very impressed with what you provide, not only from a local perspective, but from a national perspective.”

“We were still in the pilot mode” when the CCHD grant was received, she said. “At that time, it filled a gap for us.” They had lost an earlier source of support through the Atlanta Project when its focus changed. Shortly after the CCHD grant came in, the mayor provided some funding for the program, which enhances the work of city inspectors by blanketing neighborhoods with information on codes, tracking and reporting significant violators, and helping people, like senior citizens, who cannot meet codes on their own.

Most recently the full-time position of coordinator of Neighborhood Deputies, held by Terri Copeland, an experienced Neighborhood Deputy, was incorporated into the 1999 city budget under the Bureau of Planning.

Following a recent training session, there are an estimated 150 volunteer deputies working in many neighborhood planning units, including Reynoldstown, Cascade Road, West End, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and the renamed Metropolitan Parkway, formerly Stewart Avenue.

The training course has been expanded to a 10-hour, two-day course, with the second day spent in a targeted neighborhood, knocking on doors, talking about violations and distributing educational materials.

New initiatives are a pilot project to clean up illegal signs in the West End, in cooperation with the city and BellSouth, and “Paint Your Heart Out,” a day when volunteers painted homes of senior citizens in the Vine City area who were unable to make the improvements themselves.

Sheperd, a customer system engineer with Lucent Technologies, recently was one of five people chosen to receive Common Cause’s Public Service Achievement Award in Washington, D.C., for outstanding commitment to public service. She continues to live on Metropolitan Parkway.

The annual collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is the weekend of Nov. 20-21. Twenty-five percent of the collection is distributed to projects within the boundaries of the archdiocese, like the grant given to the Neighborhood Deputies’ Code Enforcement Task Force. A local CCHD committee reviews applications and approves the grant requests.

In 1999, the local CCHD grants were given to the following eight projects:

• Thomasville Residents Self-Development Program, Thomasville, providing life skills, job readiness and basic education classes and support services to poor residents of this neighborhood. Grant: $4,000.
• Metro Youth Action Council, Rebel Forest, to help establish an alliance between youth in the neighborhood and public and private sector entities that impact quality of life in the neighborhood for youth. Grant: $4,000.
• Victory House Technology Training Center, Grant Park, for training in computer literacy, financial planning, decision-making skills for a stable, productive lifestyle. Grant: $4,000.
• Community Development, West End, for the West End Youth and Seniors Community Garden to improve the appearance of the neighborhood and create a healthy relationship with environmental surroundings. Grant: $4,000.
• Computer Literacy Center, Inc., Villa Monte, Thomasville, to utilize best practices to educate residents to use computer literacy to their advantage professionally. Grant: $4,000.
• “Straight Connection” Prevention Project, Candler Road corridor, Decatur, to provide education and peer training in alcohol, tobacco and other drug prevention and intervention and to tutor in areas of reading, math and life skills. Grant: $4,000.
• Adair Park Youth Lawn Care Project, Adair Park, to provide skills and training for youth working with adult supervisors in lawn care, maintenance and landscaping work. Grant: $2,790.
• Segali Somili Services, Clarkston, Avondale, Decatur, to provide two hours of weekly radio programming on health, social and educational opportunities to the Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian communities, with plans to expand to other groups of immigrants and refugees. Grant: $4,000.