WE INVEST IN ST. LOUIS
Together, we are working to shift the region’s approach to neighborhood development.
OUR VISION:
Every St. Louis neighborhood is a chosen place to live, raise children, and grow old.
Systems Transformation in a Generation
Our 20 Year Theory of Change focuses our resources and energy on build a thriving ecosystem of leaders, organizations, and neighborhoods to deliver on this vision in one generation and sunset Invest STL by 2042.
We imagine this thriving ecosystem through the framework of people, power, place, systems. This outlook grounds much of our thinking, measuring, and movement.
COUNTDOWN TO JANUARY 1, 2042
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
POWERFUL PEOPLE
People have the confidence, capacity, authority, and resources to envision and create a place that is physically, economically, and emotionally worthy of being called home.
SOUND INVESTMENTS
Property investment is possible and advisable in predominantly Black neighborhoods.
WORTHY PLACES
Individuals, children, and their parents feel their neighborhoods can be forever homes, worthy of their lifetime, where a well-valued life is possible and where they are offered the freedom to be great or to simply be.
DURABLE INFRASTRUCTURE
Systems, organizations, and individuals can sustainably act in alignment with the belief that every person deserves this kind of neighborhood and that anything less is unacceptable.
We are motivated by the belief that every person deserves to live in a neighborhood in which they can create the life they want, and we are grounded in the conviction that anything less is unacceptable.
We act with urgency, because the unconfronted injustices of generations of anti-Black systemic racism continue to compound with time.
We are dedicated to untethering the past from what’s possible in the future by refusing to accept the restraints of generations of systemic anti-Black racism.
We acknowledge and address generations of harm created by systemic anti-Black racism, particularly harm created in the name of community development.
We are guided by an activist spirit while mobilizing institutional resources.
We are committed to rigorous self-examination and transparency about our successes, failures and learning.
We elevate lived experience and use evidence-based learning without being bound by it.
We measure success in multiple ways that reflect the complexity of this work.