GREG BLOBAUM/DN Lori Fordyce is a UNL graduate student who works with Neighbors Working Together, an outreach organization that provides leadership training for members of neighborhood associations.

Through "Neighbors Working Together," an outreach program designed to connect UNL with community members, Lori Fordyce has become the face of the university.

"Sometimes UNL is seen as this big huge entity that doesn't have a face," said Fordyce, an agricultural leadership education and communications graduate student.

"By working with neighborhood association members to help them become better, more knowledgeable leaders, we're seen as friends."

The NWT program is part of a larger federal Community Outreach Partnership Center grant, which is comprised of five programs. The NWT project itself is a federal appropriation of $67,945 out of a of $388,914 over a three-year period.

Fordyce and Dan Wheeler, an agricultural leadership education and communications professor, work together to lead the project.

The program's goals are not only to provide leadership training for members of neighborhood associations, Fordyce said, but also to serve as an educational resource on issues that affect neighborhoods, such as cleanups and recycling.

Though the grant is intended for work with neighborhoods that are adjacent to the City and East campuses, the program's popularity has grown by word of mouth, Fordyce said, and other neighborhoods have joined.

NWT conducts meetings with city government officials to inform citizens of the logistics of cleanups, and has brought in members of the media to discuss public relations techniques, Fordyce said.

Fred Freytag, a member of the Witherbee Neighborhood Association, which runs from 33rd to 56th streets, and from O Street to Randolph, currently is working with the NWT program.

The Witherbee association is newly formed, he said, and includes citizens who worked together to defeat a controversial proposed development in their neighborhood.

"I truly believe neighborhoods in NWT in many ways are like small communities that sometimes our city has lost and is trying to bring back," Freytag said.

He said in the past some bad feelings emerged from UNL's activities, but pointing fingers isn't the answer.

"We need to look ahead at what we can do to make the relationships between students and landlords, the university and neighborhoods better," Freytag said.

He said a benefit of working with NWT is not having to reinvent the wheel every time they plan an event or project.

"Any time we can share information of things that have been done, we can learn from pros and cons others have experienced so we don't have the same headaches," he said.

Freytag said an important concern for students in established neighborhoods is communication with neighbors.

"There are people who would like to be respected as far as noise, trash, property and cooperation with neighbors," Freytag said.

"We were all young once," he said, and things like parties can be acceptable if of an appropriate size and done in a proper time frame.

The Witherbee association is trying to communicate through the media and events like the UNL Housing Fair.