The Neighborhood Leadership Institute (NLI) is a program of the Danville-Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce. It is designed for increasing grassroots leadership engagement in the Dan River Region. It was started in the Fall of 2007 with a seed grant from United Way of Danville-Pittsylvania county, and already has numerous key partners to aid in its sustainability.

The NLI was born as a leadership project of the Chamber's Leadership Southside program. The need in our community is great for more engagement between neighbors. NLI provides an outlet for the development of grassroots leadership at the neighborhood level.

The mission of NLI is to increase neighbor-to-neighbor engagement for the purpose of improving our neighborhoods from the inside out. We will do this by increasing leadership confidence and capacity at the grassroots level.

We envision safer, more beautiful, more empowered neighborhoods as a result of greater organization and engagement, and we further envision enhanced neighborhoods that add value to our business community and strengthen our economic development efforts.

The NLI has 3 primary components:

1. Certificate Program in Innovative Leadership (6 Sessions with Virginia Cooperative Extension)
2. Ongoing Leadership Development Workshops
3. Technical Assistance to Neighborhoods