The Hendry Street Neighborhood Watch will be hosting a block party on Hendry Street on Saturday, July 30, from 12-5 p.m. The festivities will include awards, food, games, and music.

The block party is also sponsored by the Dorchester Bay EDC, the Boston Police Department, the BPD Crime Watch Unit, and the Uphams Corner Health Center.

Above, a recent report by BNN-TV's Neighborhood Network News and reporter Joe Rowland on progress on Hendry Street.

This event follows the neighborhood watch group’s June 6 meeting, which attracted 47 new Hendry Street resident members. Saturday’s block party will be a way to gather even more members and commemorate the club’s work since its inception last summer, said organizer Beto Rosa, community organizer at the Dorchester Bay EDC.

The Hendry Street Neighborhood Watch began after a slew of violence on Independence Day last year, when four people were shot in the area on one night. Following the incidents, community members met with Mayor Thomas Menino and started the Hendry Street Neighborhood Watch to involve local residents in the neighborhood improvement process.

“We accomplished a lot of things such as renewing stop signs, street cleaning, and new trash barrels on the street. We have a couple residents that have taken ownership of those responsibilities,” Rosa said.

The group also has four “watchdog” community members in the Hendry Street area whose responsibility it is to keep up-to-date with goings on in the neighborhood and to act as a liaison of sorts between the community and the police department.

“Whenever you have good relationships with the police, it’s better,” Rosa said. “There’s a stigma where people feel like these people [the watchdogs] are snitching, but that’s not really what they’re doing. They fight for the life quality and safety of the residents.”

In many ways, Saturday’s event will act as a backdrop to the work done by the Dorchester Bay EDC in relieving foreclosure pressure in the area. The area around Coppens Square had been known as the “hotbed of the foreclosure crisis,” says Jeanne DuBois, executive director of the Dorchester Bay EDC.

The City of Boston has brought four properties in the area with the goal of renovating them and filling them with full-time residents. For their part, the Dorchester Bay EDC bought 23 properties on Coleman, Clarkson, and Hendry Streets and is currently dipping into a $60 million budget to renovate them.

DuBois says that a key part of neighborhood stability is to ensure that invested residents own and occupy houses. This, combined with the community organizing efforts of the Hendry Street Neighborhood Watch, can improve the neighborhood.

“This area had a history of crime and lawlessness,” DuBois said. “Little by little, the Hendry Street Neighborhood Watch is taking it back.”