Advisory Board Meeting on October 5th

For those of you who couldn't make the meeting yesterday, here are my notes. I apologize for their length; we covered a fair amount of ground. Believe it or not, I left out some! (Sorry, Jack, I know it all comes down to education and jobs and it was an interesting conversation, but I'm just going to focus on the nuts and bolts.)

There was a handout which you can view at this link:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20714739/VISIONS-Advisory-Committee-Handout

In the sidebar of the handout, one of the agenda items was the executive committee's decision to rename the steering committee. The name Advisory Board or advisory committee seems to more accurately describe the role this group plays. We would like this group to be active in advising and promoting the dialog-to-action process that VISIONS has decided to sponsor in seeking community involvement and conversation on potential strategies to reduce poverty in the Northern Neck. Please take a look at the handout.

We have identified 4 core committees to work toward this process.

Marilyn Warren, Paula Fisher and Susan McFadden have begun the work of Communications. Marilyn and Paula reported on their meeting with Susan last Wednesday. They are grappling with some of the communication problems and issues. They recommend moving away from "building assets" to improving lives and building community. They feel that the term "study circles" does not really describe in a positive way what we are sponsoring and felt the term "community conversations" did. They recommend that we develop a fact sheet for media, a short bulletin piece for church newsletters, and a poverty awareness fact sheet. Susan feels strongly that VISIONS needs to develop its own website, with links to the blog, a Facebook link, media links, and so on. The domain name northernneckvisions.org is available and the cost to register that for three years is $159.95. We may need to seek sponsors for the website. In the meantime, the focus of communication will be on the community conversations VISIONS is sponsoring or facilitating. They will meet again tomorrow.

The Recruitment committee, spearheaded by Merthia Haynie and Ken Rioland, will continue to work toward gathering a group for one pilot community conversation to take place in October and November. It would be on Monday nights, probably 7:00-9:00, beginning October 19th and going for 5 weeks. Marilyn Warren has agreed to facilitate, Ken is willing to co-facilitate when he is available, but we still need one more facilitator and 10-12 participants. The pilot group will help us better understand the process and anticipate planning needs for the larger round early next year.

Planning currently consists of me and Dave Alberts, with some assistance from Paul Sciacchitano. We hope to meet this week. The number one issue for us at this point is finding a venue for the pilot conversation. The library is not available, nor is the Bank of Lancaster Community Room.
Any suggestions would be welcome. It needs to be free and at least somewhat centrally located.

The handout includes a tentative timeline; please look it over.

The final area is resource sharing. Cindy Balderson and I have already scheduled and publicized the first Resource Sharing Forum. At the June conference and at the August orientations, the issue of identifying services already in place and promoting greater collaboration and cooperation came up repeatedly. We plan to hold monthly meetings, starting Thursday, October 15th at 9:00 a.m. with a 2 hour maximum time limit. We have deliberately issued a very broad invitation to any nonprofits, government agencies, and churches who wish to share information with one another to attend. Cindy will be encouraging them to sign up for ConnectRappahannock so their profiles can be shared electronically. Jack Russell and others pointed out that phone calls are our best bet for a good turnout, so Cindy and I will meet and divide up a list of people to call. Jean Poole has agreed to help with the resource sharing effort.

Paul Sciacchitano shared some news from the River Counties Community Foundation. They were able to raise $84,000 through various matching opportunities and have met with the three counties DSS to identify where those funds might best be spent. Each DSS will receive $25,000 as a discretionary fund to distribute as they see fit to people who "fall through the cracks" in terms of the moneys the DSS normally has to give. The rest is going to the Red Cross and to area Food Banks.

Finally, we would like to set up regular monthly meetings of the Advisory Committee. Lindsy will be sending you a Doodle Poll, a free online scheduling tool, through your email, giving some choices for days and times that are possibilities. Please, please respond! It is simple to do and we want to identify the best time for all our members.