No Time for Excuses: Making a Neighborhood a Happy Place Darla Ballinger, President, Boston Avenue Neighbor Association In 1981, three days before Darla Ballinger was to move into a house on Boston Avenue on the south side of Youngstown with her two small children, neighbors vandalized it, painting racial slurs on the walls. At the …

Can’t Fight the Feeling: Searching for the Right Role Tia Toles, Associate Vice President, gener8tor Tia Toles remembers staring out the window of her office on Courthouse Square at the Wean Foundation building and thinking, “I’m not fulfilling my purpose, but one day I will.” That feeling had been gnawing at Toles, who was then …

Neighborhood Scaffolding: Building an Infrastructure to Support a City Ian Beniston, Executive Director, Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. Ian Beniston credits the origins of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. (YNDC) to a specific exchange between a resident and the Wean Foundation.  It was 2007 and Beniston, who grew up on the north side of Youngstown, was …