Invitations for Visions Conference

We are rapidly approaching our conference date, and plans are very much underway to provide a forum for community participation in efforts to build assets and community to reduce poverty. For that to happen, we need participation from a wide variety of people. I am counting on those members of the committee who agreed to invite participants to get in touch with them and encourage them to join us in this effort. The official name is Visions Conference: Building Community Assets to Reduce Poverty. The conference will run from 8:00 am to about 4:15 pm on Wednesday, June 10, 2009, and will be held at the Northumberland Community Center on Browns Store Road. It includes continental breakfast and lunch. The confirmation letters should go out next week to those who have agreed to be a part of this conference, so let me know if you'll be there or if any of your invited guests will be joining us. The Visions Committee should have gotten an email (or two!) from me on this subject.

I have reviewed the very extensive study reported by the Northern Neck Housing Study Group in March of this year. The amount of information gathered and analyzed was amazing. This conference is an opportunity to address the issues it raised and to get people involved on a number of levels, from business, education, government, social services and many more. I hope all the people who have ideas about this will be able to join us at the conference.

June Conferences

The VISIONS committee is continuing in their efforts to plan the June 10th conference at the Northumberland Community Center.  The focus of this conference will be building community assets to reduce poverty in Northumberland and Lancaster counties in the Northern Neck of Virginia.  Committee members are inviting some key community leaders and concerned citizens to participate in this first event of the duPont planning grant.  Since I will need to get letters of confirmation out to participants later this month, I'm encouraging committee members to make those phone calls and let me know who will be attending.  Just let me know at the email visions@lancasterlibrary.org

In the broader news, a very timely announcement was made by Governor Kaine last week.  My thanks to Bill Pennell for alerting us all to this and to the Governor's Housing Forum on June 8th, 9:30-11:30 am, at the Fairfax Government Center in Fairfax, VA.  You'll find a link to the Governor's press release below.  If any committee members attend the Housing Forum,  I hope you'll forward information to me for posting here.

http://www.governor.virginia.gov/MediaRelations/NewsReleases/viewRelease.cfm?id=941

Welcome!

Welcome to the new VISIONS blog!  Using this blog, we can all communicate what's new, what's happening, and what's going on with the VISIONS planning grant for the Northern Neck of Virginia.  I'll be using this blog to share information with committee members, the duPont Fund, and any other parties interested in reducing poverty and building assets in our targeted counties of Lancaster and Northumberland.  If you have something to add, please comment on the post.  I'll check your comments and revise as needed.  For now, please just add this to your favorites, bookmark it, or subscribe with your RSS.  I'll be adding content over  the next week or so.  Please be patient with me as I learn this new form of communication!

I have also created a Google calendar for VISIONS, to post events, and have invited our committee members to view or edit as needed.  You'll find calendars on the toolbar on the Google main website, and committee members should get notification of any updates.  Committee members have the ability to add events, as well.