Improving Elkhart County One Neighborhood at a Time

“I’m the President of the Southdale Bridge Builders; we’re a nonprofit organization that represents and assists several different neighborhoods in Elkhart County,” says Rick Newbill, our current spotlight volunteer. “One of the main goals of the Southdale Bridge Builders is to help beautify and improve our neighborhoods and help encourage and foster good relationships between neighbors.

Street sweeping, brush pick-up, and fire hydrant painting are some of the things we do; we spend a lot of time going through neighborhoods and helping older folks with lawn and garden maintenance—that can be something that gets more difficult for people as they get older, or if they have fewer resources.

I’ve been involved with the Southdale Bridge Builders for about 13 years.

I found a flier on my door one morning about a meeting at the First Church of God, around the corner from my house, and I attended that meeting and came away with a real strong sense of purpose and understanding of just how important it is to invest time and care into our neighborhoods. That was really the seed that got everything going. Since then I’ve been involved—through Southdale and other nonprofit organizations, such as South Side Inc.—in working and volunteering to create healthier neighborhoods with an eye on education services, collaboration, safety, culture and diversity, business and housing, and in creating and maintaining open lines of communication with our city.

Southdale Bridge Builders does a lot of work on the ground in the community, for the community, but ultimately the goal of this organization is just like the name; we want to build bridges, and not tear them down. Strengthening and supporting our neighborhoods and communities, and bringing people together in pursuit of productive solutions is what this is really all about.

“Healthy neighborhoods are wealthy neighborhoods”

For me, I looked around at some point and it felt like things just aren’t quite how they used to be with our neighborhoods, and that’s a problem. Healthy neighborhoods are wealthy neighborhoods, that is always true. Not always true the other way around, though. It’s all about securing and nurturing our future; and in my mind that starts with our neighborhoods, our kids, and our families.

I was born in South Bend, I graduated from John Adams High School and then in the early 1970s I got my insurance certificate from Purdue University. When I was a kid growing up, we always knew who our neighbors were and we usually knew them pretty well. These days it seems to me like, overall, things are more disconnected. A lot of people these days don’t know the names of their neighbors, there isn’t as much interaction as there used to be, not as much of people helping each other out—and it’s things like this that made me want to involve myself in trying to bring people together and make things better for our communities.

The thing I love the most about Elkhart County is the diversity we have here, there is so much potential here—it’s easy to want to be involved. But for some people that’s where it ends. For me, I think volunteering and being of service just comes naturally to me. I’ve been involved in volunteering for a long time, really since I was a kid at church—over 40 years ago—and I’d have to say it was my mother who influenced me to be that way. She was very involved in the South Bend Urban League and she set such a strong example for me in terms of community service and care.

Being a part of the solution

People think young kids these days aren’t involved and aren’t interested in volunteering, but honestly that’s not what I see from my end. I think in some ways it’s just the way of youth to be more focused on themselves, and not on helping those around them, and, sure, a lot of kids are self-involved. But I see so many young people in our communities these days who understand that volunteering amounts to leading and leadership, that it leads to healthier communities, healthier relationships, and healthier neighborhoods.

In general I feel like I see things turning in that positive direction, and—if I don’t get that feeling in a neighborhood that there is growing care, cooperation, and collaboration between citizens—that’s when we go to work with our organizations, trying to help out however and wherever we can to bring people together, improve communities, and shape a better future.”