A Research and Development Test bed – The ADRO Initiative

The model Legacy initiative was named ADRO® – Access Dignity, Respect & Opportunity.  The core of the initiative is expressed as such:

“All of us have as a fundamental human entitlement the ability to re-access our dignity, respect and opportunity and through that to re-new possibilities and choices in our life. And through our commitment, we can and do alter the culture within which we live.”

We recruited and trained Enculturators for the partnership. The ADRO Partnership became the Legacy XXI Institute’s road test for its intentional cultural shift strategy to overcome intransigent social issues and intentionally reduce the over-all marketplace dependent on co-dependency-driven services.

The ADRO Enculturator vision is: The homeless community can be a place where men, women and children who slip through the existing safety net can be empowered, trained and focused to turn around their lives – if they choose – to a life more powerful, fulfilling, enhancing, rewarding and contributory than their lives had been prior to ending up on the door-step of hopelessness and despair.

The ADRO Partnership takes a different route to problem solving: intentionally altering the social fabric of the community from hopelessness and despair toone of sustainability, empowerment, enhanced possibilities and choices.  In effect, the ADRO Partnership reverses the “feel, senses, and spirit” of the community and the impact this has on the residents.  ADRO Enculturators themselves shift the model from traditional social services to community turn-around.

The ADRO Partnership is intended to “tip” and reframe the culture/social fabric of the community known as Skid Row so that the change is evident to anyone on the streets, residents of the community, as well as the social services providers – including VOALA – in the community and the broader LA community.  Measures of success include: more demand for empowerment services such as training and job placement, as distinct from co-dependency services such as beds and food; and, more tangible initiatives to alter the experience of the community by the community.

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