A year after the beginning the Collective Impact Project, the Community Foundation of Grant County has made great strides in their overarching goal of facilitating thriving families in the area.
Cathy Weatherspoon, who is the facilitator and the “backbone support” for the Thriving Families project, began working at the Community Foundation in August. She described the collective impact model as a method of achieving one large goal by sharing the workload in small groups that will be making a difference in one particular subject area of the problem.
According to Dawn Brown, executive director of the Community Foundation, Collective Impact began with the idea of fighting poverty in Grant County and evolved into helping all families in Grant County thrive.
“When we started, Grant County had the highest child poverty rate in Indiana,” Brown said. “About one in three children were living in poverty. Now, we’ve lowered that to 27 percent, which is still high. That’s about one in four children, but we’re moving in the right direction.”
The goal of the project is to lift the community as a whole by sharing the workload among groups that have formed around areas that they are passionate about, that in one way or another, impact families, according to Weatherspoon.
Groups that formed in September have made headway in some of their goals. Many have received grants that will fund future projects. The Early Childhood Education Coalition, which formed prior to the Thriving Families project, also makes up most of the early education group in Collective Impact. That group applied for and was approved for the state program On My Way Pre-K, which will help families living in poverty afford childcare and pre-kindergarten education.
Other groups are looking forward to future projects as well. There have been discussions of creating a mural in the downtown area by the Quality of Life group, according to Weatherspoon, and the basic needs group has welcomed members of the community who have experienced poverty and homelessness to provide perspective for their goals moving forward.
“This is a project that involves the whole community,” Weatherspoon said. “It takes cooperation from many different people to create an impact at this scale. Our presence in these groups, many of which existed prior to this project, and providing the backbone support they need means that we’re all working in different areas but we’re aiming at the same target.”
Weatherspoon also mentioned that groups are still forming and the community has shown great interest in being involved. Anyone wishing to find out more about Collective Impact and the Thriving Families project may contact the Community Foundation.