People’s Community Center

We form partnerships with diverse local actors in order to facilitate the healthy revitalization of human capital and human potential in downtown Dover.

For four decades, the historic district of downtown Dover has suffered with decay, underdevelopment, impoverishment, and despair. After consultations with various stakeholders, a group of Dover citizens founded the People’s Community Center.

The three centers of the PCC are successfully organizing local partners and allies, and accessing funding, for pilot programs to address the neighborhood’s most critical problems:

I. Center for Neighbors in Need

The Center for Neighbors in Need addresses food Insecurity, homelessness, unemployment, despair and addiction, lack of access to basic health care, and both personal and community mental health crises. The downtown neighborhood is a food and medical care desert, and the city-wide housing crisis is acute.

II. Center for Returning Neighbors

The Center for Returning Neighbors addresses a crisis of community members returning to the neighborhood after incarceration, but with no supports to help them successfully re-integrate. No federal or state program currently provides reintegration help, so underground activity may seem like their only survival option.

III. Center for Children and Youth

The Center for Children and Youth addresses a dual crisis of childhood development. First, many children are years behind their grade levels in reading and math; second, many adolescents lack both supportive adult role models and identifiable options for a successful life outside the underground economy.