Community organizing is a vehicle for everyday people to have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Organizing involves finding and developing grassroots leaders, uniting diverse institutions such as churches,
schools, and neighborhood groups around a shared self-interest, and building power to be able to achieve a vision for the community and create systemic change.

MVOC does so through several methods, including training and developing leaders, teaching strategies to build or rebuild networks of relationships, and assisting institutions to look outward and use creative strategies for community engagement. We also serve to link a broad range of institutions to collaborate, share resources, and examine problems with a comprehensive approach. Our analysis is that there is often very good work going on in communities but it is usually fragmented and happening in isolation.

Additionally, MVOC organizes institutions to have a collective voice in the decision making process to tackle social justice issues such as reducing concentrated poverty, improving the quality of life in the Mahoning Valley, and fighting racism and inequities based upon where one lives.