The Neighborhood Leadership Academy (NLA) provides in-depth leadership training that emphasizes community building principles and strategies, project planning, organizational leadership and management practices, and personal leadership skills.

Participants are actively involved in their neighborhoods and represent communities across Adams County. Academy participants may be neighborhood association members, community leaders, resident volunteers, community-based organization staff, business owners, local government staff, or municipal elected officials — you don't need any prior title or experience to join.

This is a ten-week class held on weekday evenings starting in early 2027. It's completely free — the time and energy participants commit to their neighborhood and peers is their investment. Through this program, participants will develop the skills and build the networks necessary to create healthy, vibrant, and resilient communities.

Through seminars, discussions, and personal community projects, participants will learn:

• Community building principles and strategies
• Personal leadership skills
• Project planning and implementation tools
• Organizational leadership and management practices.

During NLA, participants will work on and share a community improvement project for their neighborhood. Past program examples include forming a neighborhood association to encourage more community involvement, proposing and implementing a community garden, developing a church-based community assets assessment, planning and obtaining funding for a neighborhood park, and raising funds to endow a school-based youth cultural enrichment program.

All participants who successfully complete the program will receive a Certificate in Neighborhood Leadership from the Chancellor of the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

This program is free & open to all Adams County residents aged 16+.