Champaign County Community Coalition 12/11

The Champaign County Community Coalition's (quick Cheat Sheet overview post) December meeting had some important announcements. For folks who have a difficult time making it to the monthly meeting on a weekday in the middle of the work day, the facilitator, Tracy Parsons announced that the meetings will be recorded and available to watch on-line and through public television beginning in 2020. He also announced an update to their website was on its way as well.

A representative from the United Way announced during introductions that Parsons was going to be recognized with an award as a Difference Maker for his work with the community, especially through the Community Coalition. Also during introductions Don Owens, former District 116 superintendent of Urbana Schools, noted his interim role leading the Champaign-Urbana Area Project following Patricia Avery's retirement (more on Avery's long service to the community in today's News-Gazette subscription eEdition here). Later he highlighted the CUAP's new location at the old Urbana Post Office with the Independent Media Center.

In the police chief updates there was a stark contrast between the campus police departments and the city departments. The campuses are both heading into spring break and only had a couple updates. UIPD highlighted the recent arrests related to two unprovoked attacks on campus (more on that from the Daily Illini here). Parkland Police are planning an educational event on marijuana legalization to help the community understand the changes and avoid misinformation. The date hasn't been finalized yet. The Community Coalition is looking for input on conversations to have on marijuana legalization as well, to help address various related equity and reentry issues locally.

Urbana's update involved one shooting that appeared to revolve around a love triangle as opposed to the other youth gun violence trends that have been devastating this year. Champaign's police chief noted that in a 24 hour period in the last month they had several incidents where seven people were shot. He noted that there had been 97 shooting incidents so far this year, emphasizing that this is a record amount and definitely not normal.


In other coalition priority updates:

The Youth Assessment Center (information links and previous Cheat Sheet update here) updated the coalition on its work, including a preliminary introduction to their Moral Recognition Therapy (MRT) work. They plan on doing a full presentation on MRT to the coalition at a future meeting. They encouraged people interested in seeing what the YAC does to visit their new location and see for themselves. More information on MRT here.

The Champaign County YMCA had a presentation updating the coalition on its youth development partnership. Topics included its summer swim school program which will have a two week swim instruction with bus services and basics (towel/swimsuit/etc) available for free to qualified 2nd-5th graders. The program is an ongoing collaboration between the Community Coalition, Unit 4, the owner of Jimmy Johns and the YMCA. They quickly highlighted some other programs the YMCA is working on. More information is available at their website and most recent program guide.

Reverend Willie Comer highlighted his midnight basketball program through the Youth for Christ organization (the News-Gazette had an interview earlier this year on that here).

Ms Hindes and several Centennial High School students explained their Peace Pilgrimage project that is raising funds to send students to a non-violence training clinic at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, GA next year. Their website is https://peacepilgrimage.org/, their GoFundMe page is here, and they have links to media interviews with more information on their webpage here.

The Community Violence Response Task Force had a presentation as well as its own meeting after the Coalition meeting. I'll be doing a separate post on both soon.

The 2020 Census is hiring and increased its rates locally to attract more applicants from $15.50/hour to $20.50/hour. The representatives at this meeting had a table and were encouraging anyone interested to apply, noting flexible hours and the age requirement being 18 years old by the time one is sworn in on the 1st of May. In related local Census news, rural census preparation was recently covered in an article by WILL here.

Next meeting information from the Coalition website:

The next Community Coalition Meeting will be on Wednesday, January 8th, 3:30-5:00 PM at the Holiday Inn Champaign, Conference Center, 101 Trade Center Drive, Champaign (Formerly Hawthorne Suites)