Khalif Ali has knocked on doors all over Homewood for the past two months. He is standing on a porch on Inwood Street, waiting for someone behind the door to yell "Who is it?"

On a porch across the street, Ryan O'Donnell is answering that question from behind another door. His voice rings out: "I'm from Operation Better Block. We're doing a community survey."

Working for Operation Better Block, these two men have conducted the door-knocking part of a vehicle Homewood advocates are steering toward the goal of creating what educator Geoffrey Canada created in Harlem with the Harlem Children's Zone.

Over several decades, the highly touted Harlem Children's Zone has become a 100-block web of comprehensive educational, recreational, medical and social services for children and adults. Its motto is "From cradle to college to community building."

John Wallace, a professor of social work at the University of Pittsburgh, heads the Homewood Children's Village project, which for two years has built a team of neighborhood advocates, educators, social service professionals, clergy and foundations. Door-knocking started the campaign in Harlem. It sometimes seems tedious, but it's "the exactly right thing to do," said Evans Moore, assistant director of Operation Better Block.

A funny thing about knocking on doors, said Mr. Ali: "You start out kind of like, 'Ooo, I don't know' -- jittery with a sense of dread. Some people crack the door then wave you away like a piece of bad cheese. Most people say 'sure,' and stand out in the cold answering questions in a sweatshirt or a housedress.

"As you keep doing it, you start to hear amazing stories about how people have been around for generations and what their lives have been like. Then you can't wait to go back out again."

Mr. Ali is an organizer for Operation Better Block, whose bread and butter has been building block watches and staging neighborhood litter clean-ups. Mr. O'Donnell is an intern, a graduate student in social work at the University of Pittsburgh. Among a handful of volunteers these men have traipsed so many of Homewood's streets that they're starting to blur.

"Did we already do this block?" Mr. Ali asks as they head along Kelly Street.

"I think..."

"It looks familiar."

Carrying clipboards with pages of five basic questions, each man works a different side of a street.

"What's your favorite thing about Homewood?" Mr. Ali asks a woman whose teen-aged son has answered the door.

"Transportation," she says, referring to the many buses that serve the neighborhood.

"What has kept you here?"

"Raising kids," she says, fluttering an arm as though better reasons might be out there.

Later, Mr. Ali said he improvised on "What has kept you here?" The whole point of the questions is to prompt more conversation and build relationships. "She has been here 30 years," Mr. Ali said after finishing that interview. "A lot of people have been here a long time because they had a house left to them. A lot of people are waiting and hoping."

Pines and feathery shrubs line a walkway back to a door that Robert Grinage answers.

"Sure," he says, leaning against the frame.

"What is your favorite thing about Homewood?" Mr. Ali asked.

Mr. Grinage's face spreads into a wide smile. "Man, this is where I grew up. I've been in the Air Force, all around the world, and I'm back. I love it."

Asked what he would change if he could, he talked about violence as "a symptom. We need more green spaces, more livable spaces, more opportunities for Homewood to be more of a community." He pointed out that Homewood doesn't have a supermarket.

At the home of Geneva Davis, Mr. Ali is asked inside.

"What is your favorite thing about Homewood?" Mr. Ali asked her. Ms. Davis sits on a sofa and taps the wall absently behind her. Softly, she muses, "What do I like about Homewood ..."

"Not a trick question," said Mr Ali.

"Well, y'know, I've lived here all my life," she said with a sigh. "And everywhere I have lived here has been pleasant."

If there were something she could change? She knocks on the wall emphatically and says, "The violence."

Homewood has been plagued in recent years with the gun violence that has riddled many neighborhoods. But the number one what-I-would-change-if-I-could answer is abandoned properties. Homewood is painted all over, in broad strokes, with swaths of empty lots and blighted homes.

Violence and drug dealing are the number two and three answers, said Mr. Moore, a founder of the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network. He said all three of the top answers are intertwined.

He spoke of a moment of awakening he had one day while conducting the survey.

"We saw a porch full of young guys, a group of teens in a pack," he said. "The signal there is 'danger, danger.' But I said, 'Let's go talk to these guys.' We told them what we were doing, and -- " he waved his hand to imitate their dismissive response.

"I said, 'Look, we're always complaining about not having a voice. This is a chance for you to share yours.' Well, we were on the porch for 45 minutes talking about Homewood.

"They were all home on break. They were college students. Just to hear a 20-year-old say his favorite thing about Homewood is the housing stock was such a shot in the arm to me."

The survey and a walking inventory of the condition of properties and street features will be part of a report back to the neighborhood, he said. "We will also take that door to door."

Every step leading toward the Homewood Children's Village has to be done with rigorous intent, said Mr. Moore.

"People are tired of one more comprehensive community plan. People are like, 'OK, I'm being surveyed one more time. Are we just talking again?' One guy said, 'I'm tired of talking.'

"Homewood is ready."

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