Community Coalition 6/12

Last week the Champaign County Community Coalition met at its new larger venue at the Holiday Inn Conference Center, where they plan to keep meeting at least until December. There are pictures of the event available on the coalition's facebook page here. The meeting started a bit late to allow everyone to find the new location and check out some of the promotional items at the back tables.

After introductions the Unit 4's Goal Getters program had a presentation, including by several students involved in the program (the News-Gazette had a good overview of the program last year here). The overview included accomplishments including Parkland scholarships, and the kids explaining some of their vocational and career goals. The Q&A portion involved a lot of questions about what the community and schools can do to help them succeed. The young men emphasized the need for understanding and engaging kids before judging them. Kids need to know that their community cares about them as human beings and whether they succeed or fail. In our current environment kids can be unaware that anybody out there actually cares what happens to them.

The ideas they presented weren't extravagant. Homework programs, mentoring, realistic success stories, and opportunities to be successful. Those opportunities may be everything from vocational training to work opportunities. There was a real desire to earn money and have financial stability. They reiterated the need for understanding, to have the kids engaged in all of this and keep them involved. They argued that our community is too segregated and that we need to be all together on this to understand what everyone is going through and ensure opportunities are there.

The police chiefs gave their updates on May's uptick in shooting incidents in Champaign and Urbana between people, people in cars, at houses, etc. A lot of the information presented here is preliminary with some arrest follow ups from previous incidents, but the impression I got is that for the amount of rounds fired in various incidents, we're lucky that we didn't have more reported injuries. Urbana's interim police chief has been made permanent. More on that at the News-Gazette here.


Other highlights:

• Event dates and information for the free activities with Urbana Play Days in the Park.
• An update on CU Trauma and Resiliency Initiative which is again meeting before the Champaign Community Coalition meeting at the same new location.
• DREAAM House highlighted its programs for building an opportunity pipeline to follow kids 5-24 towards success. This summer they'll be focusing on a lot of outdoor activities (N-G overview of the DREAAM program from last year here).
• The Urbana "Self-Made Kings" program, a similar concept to the Champaign Goal Getters program, will probably have some kids presenting at the next Coalition meeting.
• iRead/iCount is still looking for tutors to help with basic reading and soon math skills to help kids increase letter identification and other basic skills where there are gaps as early as kindergarten. 
• Unit 4 also had information for a Kindergarten Readiness Camp (flyer with more information below - click to enlarge)
  
• Head Start is expanding and they very much want people to know they're hiring everything from teacher's aids, cooks, etc. More information on the Head Start expansion from WAND here. 
• The University YMCA's New American Welcome Center noted a recent accreditation for immigration law practice and highlighted its services. More on that in an upcoming local refugee and immigration services post.
• The Youth Assessment Center highlighted their surveys for kids with gift card rewards for filling them out.

There was also a presentation on the Violence Response Forums with updates on the first feedback from the initial forum, a complicated slide on the response model, and next steps. A lot of those next steps involve outreach with various faith based and service providing organizations to connect people with needs to. There's also the practical issues of more volunteers and space options for the project. A key issue they're looking to improve upon is making sure the impacted community and families get connected to the resources they need when these tragedies take their tole on survivors and communities. More information on that and how to get involved below (click to enlarge):