By Robert Barron, Staff Writer
Enid News and Eagle
ENID —
Community Development Support Association was started in 1980 by a Phillips University professor, Gary Theilen, and others who were interested in community planning.
Theilen taught sociology at Phillips, and along with the others started CDSA with no money and no staff. Today, CDSA has 40 employees, a $3 million budget and administers 15 community programs.
“We’re a locally grown, private nonprofit with a 21-member board,” said Cheri Ezzell, executive director.
CDSA periodically changes the services it offers to be able to offer programs the community needs. The organization performs a community assessment at intervals to determine what services are needed that are not being offered. Ezzell said the organization tries to be flexible and have options for people even if CDSA cannot directly address their needs.
Moves to cut federal and state budgets are worrisome to Ezzell, who raises money mostly from state and federal grants and through United Way of Enid and Northwest Oklahoma. However, she is optimistic. If federal and state funds for the programs CDSA offers are cut, she will find funding elsewhere, she said.
“We have to be willing to change. We’re always seeking grants. It’s our culture, it is the way we work,” she said.
Among the programs that have had the most community interest is Youth Build, which takes high school dropouts and teaches them construction skills, while helping them obtain their GED.
Another successful program is Parents at Teachers. That program sends trained parent educators to work with new parents to help them learn how to be the best parents they can be, Ezzell said.
CDSA also has had a number of housing projects. The organization was involved in the Roosevelt Park apartment project and used its land bank program to help provide property for the apartment complex. A professional company built affordable-rent apartments on the site of the old Roosevelt Elementary School, which had been torn down. After a controversial start and opposition from a neighborhood group, the apartments were built, and Ezzell said it has been a successful project.
Another housing program uses the CDSA land bank to provide land on which new homes are built for low-income families on sites where deteriorating houses have been torn down. A number of those were built in the Roosevelt Park neighborhood, and Ezzell said that program also has been successful.
CDSA also operates a supportive employment service for people with disabilities. They learn jobs with a mentor, who accompanies them to the workplace.
CDSA is in the midst of a its current fundraising drive to raise more than $2.5 million for renovation of a historic downtown building that will become its new home. Ezzell expects the nonprofit center to house about 10 Enid nonprofit organizatons, which she said will help the nonprofits with costs and help CDSA to be more efficient.
For additional information or to make a donation to the project, contact Ezzell at CDSA, 242-6131, or go online to the website at www.cdsaok.org.
