Community members gathered Monday evening to celebrate a graduation of a different kind.

Beginning last fall, neighbors in the Pleasant Street area began to meet with city officials and trainers from the Institute for Public Safety Partnerships (IPSP) in order to better their environment. Citizens worked with these trainers to develop strategies to rid their neighborhood of the problems that have tarnished its reputation in recent years.

The celebration marked the end of their formal training with the members from the IPSP. Each graduate received a certificate noting his or her accomplishments with the program and the graduates posed for pictures with their mortar board hats. IPSP Trainer Maria Zavala congratulated the graduates by pointing out the importance of what they achieved working together.

“Without each one of you in this room, we couldn’t have accomplished what we did,” Zavala said.

The training sessions centered around a problem-solving model put forth by the IPSP. This model teaches citizens to first assemble community members and then identify and prioritize the problems.

Residents needed to analyze the problem in order to begin developing and implementing strategies to fix them. After careful evaluation of their strategies, residents were invited to celebrate their successes with the program.

The strategy this group chose to fix problems that have plagued their neighborhood was dubbed a triangle method. Each leg of the triangle represents an aspect of the problem, from who causes the problem to where the problem occurs. The third leg of the problem involves who is affected by the problem.

Residents determined that the main complaints, the loud music and the racing cars, were centered around a rental property in the area and contacted the landlord, who was unaware of most of the problems the neighbors were concerned with.

The neighbors worked together to develop the partnerships with not only each other, but also many city officials. Third Ward Alderman Steve Kapitan and DeKalb Police Chief Bill Feithen were among those receiving diplomas during the ceremony for their work in forming a relationship with the community.

Local resident Keith Rebhorn was pleased with the results of the program and is already looking toward the future.

“Is this the end of the story? Is the problem solved forever? Probably not,” Rebhorn said. “But we have the know-how, the tools if these problems arise in the future.”

Zavala agreed.

“You have control of how you let your environment unfold in front of you.”