Manna Community Development Corp

We have three main organizing areas: ONE Right to Income, ONE Right to Land, and ONE Right to Housing. As with our overall organizational development, these organizing areas have grown out of the work of Manna CDC, but now have a stronger focus and city-wide perspective.

Community economics is a key organizing area for ONE DC. Our ONE Right to Income initiative is one of the ways we are working to create a model of community-driven justice and systemic change around income, economic equity, and workers' rights.

Through our community organizing work and the ongoing participation from our community leadership, ONE Right to Income evolved from the Manna CDC's Shaw Education for Action (SEA) program to organize for targeted training and hiring agreements for living- wage jobs created in new development.

The emphasis of ONE Right to Income grew from residents' inability to secure good paying, living wage jobs, despite participating in and completing multiple job training programs. The focus on income and economic equity came from former SEA members who were passionate about employment and workers' rights issues.

ONE Right to Housing is an expansion on Manna CDC's tenant organizing work.

In addition to continuing to provide education to tenants as to their existing rights, ONE DC staff has begun to develop a constituency that will take a more critical look at housing policy to identify critical housing rights that should exist, but currently do not.

Currently, this constituency is working jointly with our ONE Right to Land campaign on affordable housing and Community Benefits Agreements.

--We assist tenant associations in purchasing their residential buildings.

--We assist tenants with organizing and strengthening their associations.

--We provide education on tenant rights.

ONE Right to Land: Formerly the Equitable Development Initiative, this group was convened to reorient the development process of Shaw's public land to be responsive to the community, including its long-time, low-income residents.

ONE Right to Land is a coalition of diverse residents, organizations, churches, and businesses that seek to forge community relationships to ensure that everyday residents are given a seat at the decision-making table and real needs are met by development in Shaw as well as other areas of the city.

The group secured the District's first Community Benefits Agreement which will govern the development of two pieces of Shaw's vacant city-owned land, Parcel 33 at 7th and S Streets, NW and Parcel 42 at 7th and R Streets, NW.

The agreement guarantees affordable housing, local jobs, space for local businesses, and a community fund.