About Holyoke Unites
A Community Wide Coalition to Improve the Quality of Life for All Residents of Holyoke through a Process of Community Engagement
Background
In April of 2007 under the leadership of Enlace de Familias and their Executive Director Betty Medina Lichtenstein the Holyoke community gathered to assess whether it made sense “To create a system in Holyoke that maximizes our ability to work together for the community, and to make our helping system the most effective it can be.”
The meeting was called to undertake a planning process to address the multitude of uncoordinated coalitions in this small city of 40,000. Many providers and others were going to too many overlapping meetings and many expressed frustration with this. There was a definite need to streamline the system. There were also too many different needs assessments being done with no collaboration so that people are constantly looking to gather “new” data which leads to a lot of wasted time and often no action. Finally there was a strong need to move towards a system where the residents’ voices were the guiding force for all collaborative action.
April Kick-off Meeting
The letter of invitation was signed
by directors from Enlace, the Holyoke
Health Center,
Nueva Esperanza and Nuestra Raices.(see attached) The April meeting attracted
an impressive group of 90 that indicated high interest. Mapping the existing
coalitions we were flabbergasted that the group listed over 35 different
coalitions in this city of 40,000. The group then engaged in a visioning and
priority setting process that ended with small work groups starting to organize
around the top four identified issues.
The Creation of Holyoke
Unites/Holyoke Se Une -Follow up
Following April there were two major gatherings (June and September) with over 40 people attending both. All along subgroups met to pursue specific issues focusing on strategic planning and information exchange. The September meeting was highlighted by a presentation from David Weed of Healthy City Fall River. At that September meeting the over 40 people who had re-gathered agreed to establish Holyoke Unites/Holyoke Se Une. Work was begun on a web site and on a community visioning/needs assessment similar to a process used in Fall River. The plan over the next year was to continue with monthly meetings of: the whole coalition, the Design Dream Team (steering), and the Task Force on Information Dissemination that will work on the web page. Enlace de Familias was designated the lead agency working with the Design Dream Team and the whole coalition.
If you would like to help Holyoke Unites please join the team by sending us your contact information i.e. Name, address, telephone number or email.
