Megan Delong is the Neighborhood Network Coordinator at Habitat for Humanity of Summit County, Ohio.
Here is a bio Megan shared with us:
My name is Megan Delong and I am a 2018 Sociology Alum from the University of Akron. I am currently working in the non-profit sector at Habitat for Humanity of Summit County as Neighborhood Network Coordinator. Neighborhood Network focuses on the Middlebury and University Park neighborhoods here in Akron – I’m so happy to be a resident of the Middlebury neighborhood! My favorite past times are painting, watching a new movie with homemade popcorn, and taking a walk through the community with my fiancé Sam. I am so grateful for my Sociology experience at the University of Akron and can’t wait to see more Sociology grads come from UA!
Important links:
neighborhoodnetworkakron.org
facebook.com/NeighborhoodNetworkAkron/
instagram.com/neighborhoodnetworkakron/
And my email megand@hfhsummitcounty.org is available and open for all!
Daniela Jauk 0:54
This morning I have in the virtual Why Sociology studio, I have a U Akron graduate. It's Megan Delong. Hi, Megan.
Megan Delong 1:06
Hello, Dani, how are you?
Daniela Jauk 1:08
I am so well this morning because I get to see you here. Tell us right off the bat, what is your job role? And what are you doing?
Megan Delong 1:17
First of all, thank you so much for having me on Why Sociology I'm so excited to be here. My name is Megan Dillard and right now I am the neighborhood network coordinator for neighborhood network. It's a program of Habitat for Humanity of Summit County. You know, Habitat for Humanity focuses on all of Summit County, but neighborhood network is the neighborhood revitalization department program of Habitat for Humanity. So we actually focus on the Middlebury and University Park neighborhoods here in Akron. If you don't know where that is, it's right smack dab where you are all around the university is University Park. And then the neighborhood right next to it is called an Middlebury. A lot of people confuse it with like East Akron and some of University Park with downtown. But I promise they're two very distinct, very amazing communities and neighborhoods here in Akron. And what I really do is I talk to neighbors, I listen to a lot of like issues, but also ideas that they have neighborhood network very much focuses on asset based community development. So what we do, you know, it's I wear a lot of different hat, we have monthly meetings where we have community members come and learn about resources, but also provide us information about the neighborhood, I am a Middlebury neighbor. So I do very much care about this community that I both live and work in. Both these neighborhoods are very, like disenfranchised, they have a low percentage of home ownership, they don't get talked about a lot, or there isn't a lot of like funding for this neighborhood, and a lot of neighbors feel forgotten, or that they're not cared about. So it is a lot of working and building trust among neighbors, and then hopefully encouraging them and empowering them to better their own quality of life in the neighborhood for both them and their neighbors. It's a lot of listening. It's a lot of working together. It's a lot of advocating for change in these two neighborhoods.
Daniela Jauk 3:22
That sounds just so wonderful, and also very sociological. How would you say this sociology inform what you are doing?
Megan Delong 3:34
Sociology. I use it every single day. I graduated in 2018. With my sociology degree, I did so much when I was in college and like, taking my sociology classes, like I was the president of sociology club for about a year. So that really like definitely, you know, I keep that in my brain at all times. But I don't think I would fully understand the intersections of race, class, gender, health care, how transportation affects quality of life, like I don't think I would truly understand what affects a cohort of people as much as I would have if I didn't do sociology for my major. One of the biggest things that I do every single day right now during the spring is we focus on walk audit, a walk audit, it's a survey on the public land. So think sidewalks, streets, street signs, vacant lots owned by the city or the county bank, it houses basically anything in that realm. I have to work with neighbors who have maybe never gotten into their community or haven't felt safe in the neighborhood. And I asked them like, Hey, can you provide us data to give us your qualitative and quantitative descriptions of the public space? is in your neighborhoods. So just walk around like where your house is, and then come back with information that we can use that we can eventually send back to the city. And that information, whether it's talking about potholes or missing manhole covers, does this road need a bike lane many different things that could better the quality of life for the neighbors in this neighborhood, like one of the biggest things is obviously trash and litter safety, lighting, are the sidewalks cracked or messed up things for accessibility, do intersections have curb cuts, those kinds of things that affect everyone in a different way, but definitely affect the whole community, I'm able to analyze that data thanks to my stats, background for sociology, my research methods that I took with Dr. Xi, I have absolutely loved that class, I'm able to use that and take this data that they give us through the survey. And I actually create a report that goes like back to the city. It's holding the city accountable. It's teaching us what are the nuisances in the area. And also some ideas that like the neighbors have said that they're interested in in bettering their lives and everyone around them. So it really is really taking my sociological brain, and really making it focusing on the group as a whole, focusing on the neighborhoods as holes, because they're not the same neighborhood, even though they're right next to each other. They have differences, there's different things that they need versus different things that they want. And really, like I said, listening and like learning that there's all these different intersections, different kinds of people that live in these two neighborhoods that really make it so special. And also they give their own perspective about what might be good or a bad thing in the neighborhood that really is, you know, what I use every single day, listening, learning to the folks that are here,
Daniela Jauk 6:59
Megan, that sounds like a dream job for a sociologist, I hear you are doing research, you're doing advocacy, you doing interventions, you are doing policy work. So this is a very multifaceted field. And I know, excited in your case that the University of Akron prepared you so well, for that rich field. I have many questions now. That's every neighborhood in Akron, heaven, Megan belong? Wow.
Megan Delong 7:32
Well, um, so fun fact. So I guess, neighborhood network was actually its own entity before we merged with Habitat for Humanity in 2017. And around that time, you know, I was still a student at the university, I really didn't know as much as I do. Now, definitely years in the making a lot of neighborhoods have community development corporations. Those are similar to what we do. We actually, you know, back in 2016 2015, my boss was hired about seven years ago, and I was only hired about one year ago here. So like, I haven't been here for that long. I've been a neighbor since 2019. So a little after I graduated, actually neighborhood network started back in 2011 2012, as a group of religious leaders in the neighborhood specifically, but this was not a one time thing. It wasn't just like a one time meeting and it wasn't just Middlebury in University Park, a lot of neighborhoods in Akron, which there are 24 neighborhoods in Akron. So there's a bunch of different places and people doing very similar, great work, they started around those times too. And like things started formulating. And what just happened is back in 2011 2012, actually one of our still current core team members, so it's a group of volunteer folks that come and like help me and my boss, make decisions about the neighborhood, all work, live or play in either of these two neighborhoods. So one of our current core team members, actually, his name is Pastor Ron Schultz. He is the pastor at the family of faith UMC on east market street, so very close to the university and smack dab in the middle of Middlebury. So those 10 years ago, he really started this, we can't just stop here and like having conversations, we have to keep this going. And so he was just like, we should really do something about like making sure that this neighborhood like stays healthy, happy and having a good quality of life. At that point, they had seen some like decline both in economic support for these neighborhoods and then beyond. So they started the monthly meetings. And it started like I said, as more like religious based a lot of the religious leaders in the neighborhood really attended those and recruited folks to come, but then it really more left into neighborhood focused, the neighbors kind of led these meetings, they talked about the issues that they had. And although a lot of the religious leaders might have dropped off, these monthly meetings still continued to happen. Five years go by, it's like 2015 2016, my boss gets hired, we're now able to do more when we have like, actual paid staff member. So she starts making it more of that like asset based community development, he does these things called neighborhood reborns. And what that is, is that she would collect a group of neighbors on like a similar streets, let's say Betty Street, which is near the Mason elementary school, or ups in the street, which is also here in Middlebury near Summa five to six, maybe even 10 neighbors on those streets and maybe doing one of these a year or two a year, maybe so one in the spring, one in the fall, and she would see what people need help with the most. And they would provide port volunteers to help them maybe like clean up their garden, fix their front porch, do small, but very necessary work on folks houses. And during that they actually were like, Okay, we don't have like a ladder, but someone needs help on the roof, and they're siding. So Marissa, my boss reached out to Habitat for Humanity of Summit County. And that's really how this partnership and then eventual programming together started. It was really just like, hey, could we borrow a ladder, and then neighborhood network actually merged with Habitat for Humanity in 2017. Not only do we build houses, but we also rehab houses. So that's a big, very helpful thing that neighborhood network has been able to do specifically in the Middlebury and University Park communities where there are a lot of Venket house
Daniela Jauk 11:57
that is amazing. Now, of course, I want to know how did you get into this field.
Megan Delong 12:02
So I actually, I was working at a local shelter, so also in this neighborhood, and I was invited to start coming to the neighborhood network meetings. By that time, I had moved into a rental house that I'm currently still in here in Middlebury, it was just very local, it was close to my job. And it was in a good neighborhood, and that neighborhoods, Middlebury, and so I was invited to neighborhood network meetings, I had heard about it. And then I started going back in 2019. And I started meeting neighbors, I started being more involved. So every monthly meeting has a free meal, and childcare, maybe 20 or 30 people at a meeting. But the meals were made for enough for like 50 people. So there would be a lot of leftovers, what I would do at the time, to Hayzlett. She works for Summa, but she's also on our core team. So she works for Summa, and she goes to church here in the neighborhood. And she used to live here as well. So she's like, very connected and cares about this community. She makes all of our homemade meals for each of our monthly meetings. And she would let me take the rest of the leftovers to the shelter that I worked out. So I was able to provide, you know, like the residents at the shelter, extra food. So that's really how I got started with neighborhood network. And then eventually, you know, I was more of a neighbor, I felt really connected to this neighborhood, I started seeing the assets that are here. There's the university and their Summa and there's these we call them anchor institutions. So these big institutions that create and generate wealth for neighborhoods, there's also smaller organizations like neighborhood network and links Community and Family Services. And all these other organizations like the YMCA or the restaurants or small businesses that are in this area that I just started to really care about. So I ended up volunteering for neighborhood network in my off time and helping Marissa figure out topics for monthly meetings, and then COVID happened and all those topics we could not do because we had to you know, cancel all the meetings. I ended up having to quit my job before COVID reasons. And then I ended up being contract with neighborhood network doing the walk audit program. So I coordinated the walk audits, and I coordinated with neighbors I met people that I never met that literally lived less than five minutes for me and I ended up getting their data and creating that first report back in 2020. That really like got me so interested in the walk audits, I was able to see like wow, this is exactly where I want to be like it's very like you said policy. It's advocacy and empowerment to neighbors that haven't felt empowered for a long time. So it really, it feels up my alley, not only to help I live in this neighborhood and I get to see it blossom every single day and like we're equip these people that are doing the work to make it have a better quality of life for all the neighbors involved in both Middlebury and University Park. That's why I got involved. That's why I started caring because I went to these monthly meetings and I saw people caring. And that was it for me, you know. So now I've been here as an employee since 2021. So here I am. And I don't plan on stopping
Daniela Jauk 15:26
This is just beautiful. Can you give us a salary range, what one could expect in the nonprofit sector
Megan Delong 15:32
right now I am part time, you know, hoping to be full time, I did have a job in another nonprofit before this after I graduated, that was in the 30000s. This is hopefully becoming full time will also be around that range. So I would say like 30 to 40 in nonprofits is very common.
Daniela Jauk 15:51
So you apparently got into this because you were very active. You were volunteering in different places, that is a good route into employment and into careers. What could students that get now interest? What is your recommendation for them? How could they get involved?
Megan Delong 16:11
Definitely a couple different ways. One, we actually work with the university a lot, especially when it comes to the Experiential Learning Center, we actually are providing an internship right now, for anyone it's data collection, it's to help me with those mock audits that I keep talking about if anyone's interested in that we have an internship available through the XL center. But at any time, you can contact me or we have a Facebook and an Instagram that you can contact us through. It's both neighborhood network Akron, you can find us through there, we have a website, which is www dot neighborhood network akron.org And then anything through there, you should be able to find our contact, you can sign up for our newsletter on our front page of our website, we send that out monthly, and it has all the information of different events going on in the two different neighborhoods or what we're doing. And then if you're interested in doing a walk audit, if you live in these neighborhoods, and you want to tell us this data, we're actually providing a $50 gift card. We also do physical space revitalization. So we work in boss Park two minutes from the University of Akron, it is one of the only green spaces in University Park despite having park in the name, but it's a small kind of passive Park and we're trying to add the vacant lot that's between it and Lake Elementary School into the major park itself. And we're trying to create a food forest and a mental health oasis. We need neighbors and students and faculty that are so interested, we're creating a Friends of boss Park group, if you're interested in making like changing decisions, if you want to see your vision for the park come to life, we do really need someone to come out and help us with that.
Daniela Jauk 17:55
Let me congratulate you because you also have just received an Excellence award Yeah, for your great collaboration with University of Akron students, what should the student bring which skills are necessary if they want to work with you?
Megan Delong 18:14
First and foremost, open mindedness is one of the biggest things you can bring to this table. You never know who you're gonna meet in these neighborhoods, people come from all different walks of life, and they might be struggling or they might be thriving. But either way, you know, like their opinion on this neighborhood matters, especially if like you yourself are a neighbor, your opinion matters. And being open minded about either what other folks are saying or about your ideas for the future is really the number one being open minded. Listening is very important. Just hearing out maybe what neighbors or anchor institutions or small businesses say about the neighborhood data collection and research methods are super important. For we do a lot of like listening trainings and like listening situations where we like, listen, while we're in parks for like, I don't know, just people talking, just people living just people, you know, being in these spaces we're trying to do placemaking we're trying to make this an area where people want to be. So we're listening to what people say that quantitative and qualitative coming in here and understanding like the differences between those different types of research and why they're so important. I would say we definitely do more qualitative working regarding surveys. We are always doing different surveys, whether it's for the walk audits or for boss Park, we are always working with our council or Ward representatives. We're all always working with city of Akron officials, so just kindness, listening, open mindedness I think those are all things that I learned while I was in sociology and all those might seem like soft skills, I use them every single day and they benefit me. Like you would not believe I wouldn't be where I am. And like caring about the things that I care about the physical spaces in our neighborhood and like how to make a space accessible. I don't know if I would have known that these were things that I could care about without sociology
Daniela Jauk 20:21
That is wonderful because you really show how sociology can be applied, how we apply the theory we learn and the methods, Great segue, this podcast is called Why Sociology, I want to know what made you pick sociology as a major,
Megan Delong 20:39
I took the sociology, criminology and law enforcement was my major, I don't think that degree exists anymore. I want you to know the sociology part is why I stuck with this major, I fully thought I was going to come into this loving the criminal justice and I walked out of the University of Akron completely and utterly in love with sociology. And part of it really is, you know, so maybe this isn't why I chose sociology, but maybe why I stuck with sociology. And not because it was like a negative stuck. I think I stuck with it because I, I found the importance of empathy as so life changing. I took Dr. Erickson's sociological theories class. And one day she was like, if you need extra credit, which like everyone in her class, did, you know like it was theory class, it was like kind of hard. She's like, Alright, go to a sociology club meeting. That's how you can get extra credit for me. And I'm like, Alright, me, one of my friends that I met in that class went to a meeting. And we did the empathy experiment. And it was a way just to meet other people that we've never known before and see their experiences without judgment. And really see regardless of where you are, or where you come from, or who you are, we all ended up in the same room, taking the same class being in sociology club, that empathy that grew out of me from both taking that class from being in this major. From then eventually running sociology club made me who I am, I stuck with sociology, because empathy is the biggest strength that I have. And I wouldn't have it without other students and the other staff and faculty of the Sociology Department of the University of Akron.
Daniela Jauk 22:30
Oh, I am deeply moved. Megan. Thank you. So you are really a gift to the world and the gift to this podcast. You are our final episode for the first season and we could not have found a more rich and more amazing interview partner. I thank you so much for your work. And thank you so much for taking the time.
Megan Delong 22:55
Thank you so much for having me. It was fantastic. Thank you so much. And I love everything you're doing I love this podcast. Thank you for having me.
Daniela Jauk 23:07
Thank you so much for tuning in to Why Sociology. Megan's episode is the seventh and last episode of season one big thank you to Mitchell McKinney, the dean of the buchtel College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Akron who has supported this podcast with the Dean's Innovation Fund. We hope we have inspired you to dive into theories, methodologies in the magic of sociology and we hope we have shown you that you really can go anyplace with your sociology major. Bye for now and tune in again for follow up seasons. Why Sociology?