Visions

As Paula Fisher reminds us in this postcard, it's been nearly a month since VISIONS sponsored the Conference to Build Community Assets to Reduce Poverty in the Northern Neck.

During those 30 days, school got out for the summer.  That's good news for teachers and students who needed a break. But nearly half the students in both Lancaster and Northumberland Counties were eligible for free and reduced lunches through the school.  What are they doing and how are they coping?  

What about you?  What have you been doing? We all left that conference energized and committed to finding ways to reduce poverty in the Northern Neck.  Share your news with VISIONS by adding a comment to this post.  With the new poverty email list on connectRappahannock, I can get the word out to all who participated or were interested in the conference.  Cindy Balderson and I hope to sponsor a monthly open house or forum in which we can do some active resource sharing.  I'll use your news to help me generate a list of "stars" for each of those.

Read through the blogposts to get an idea of what VISIONS has been doing. The VISIONS committee will be meeting next week on July 14th at 8:30 at the Lancaster Community Library. We'll be calling our participants and interested people to ask them to commit to some subcommittees. Those subcommittees will be working toward our next big step.

We are excited to announce that we are launching an ambitious program called Study Circles to continue our efforts to gather ideas and energy from as many people as we can.  We need diversity and numbers and, as we all realized at the conference, we need to hear from the people who live in poverty.  We hope to get that  going in the fall.  Want to know more about it?  Keep your eye on this blog.  Want to help?  Save these dates: August 18 & 19.  We'll be having two evening programs then to orient us all.

Gwen Whiting will be showing us the ropes, guiding us through the process and getting us ready to go.  Plan to join us as we continue our efforts, we need you all.  At the end of this exciting endeavor, we'll have a dynamic strategy for reducing poverty that all of us can embrace.

Working together, we can make a difference, we can build assets and community and reduce poverty in the Northern Neck.