Planning Committee

Hismen Hinnu
September 16, 2004 12:00-2:00 p.m.
Meeting Notes

NEXT MEETING – TBD at Hismen Hinnu

DECISIONS/NEXT STEPS:

Work Group Updates

• 23rd Avenue large gathering is tentatively scheduled for Thursday October 28 th at GarfieldElementary School.
• Health Promotor Graduation will take place Wednesday, September 22, 6pm at St. Anthony’s School Café. Fred will ask Elena to get video footage of the event. Karen will send an email to Venise about student coverage for the magazine.
• Let the Newspaper group know if you have ideas for the holiday issue of the newspaper. Carl will get in touch with newspaper about the Eastlake Merchants Association advertisement.

Transition Plan

• Fred gave an overview of the summary and recommendations of the individual meetings he and Junious had with LSAC members. He stated that the most important part is to make sure that every work group has what it needs to achieve its work plans.
• Work Groups will be provided with a template that helps them determine what they currently have in place and what they still need to do. It will provide a visual representation for groups to work from.
• November 3rd will be the first meeting of the joint site team-planning committee. This will take place right after Fred’s trip to Baltimore. Work groups need to pick one representative each to serve on this committee.
• Mara shared that she is working on finding out which facilitation group is best suited to meet our needs. We are still looking to do a basic training this fall.

Attendees:

Fred Blackwell, Making Connections Oakland
Sandra Chapin, Making Connections Oakland
Pat Constantine, San Antonio Community Development Corporation
Don Davenport, San Antonio Community Development Corporation
Kristen Graser, La Clinica de la Raza
Mara Guccione, Urban Strategies Council
Brendan Leung, FES Coach
Jennie Mollica, Lao Family Community Development
Carl Pascual, EBALDC
Karen Stevenson, Core Communications
Bill Wong, Diarist

Work Group Updates

23rd Avenue

• There will be a meeting of the work group this Thursday, 12-2pm at EBAYC
• They are targeting 150 households for the large gathering, which is tentatively scheduled for Thursday October 28 th at Garfield Elementary school. They’ll be sending out a postcard to all the families who participated in the original sessions last year. The goal is to find creative ways to get people involved and to get residents to voice support for the PAC recommendations. Jenny acknowledged that there should be no hold-ups from the PAC.
• EBALDC has brought on Jerry Henderson as the 23 rd Avenue Coordinator.
• Community Development Block Grant RFP is due out at the end of the month. EBALDC is putting together two proposals on behalf of the 23 rd Avenue work group. Brendan asked if it would be problematic if both proposals come from EBALDC?

FES

• The next FES work group meeting with be Thursday September 23rd, 10-12 at EBAYC.
• The survey was completed and EBAYC staff have gone to families who want to continue to be involved and participate in the work. EBAYC is finding out people’s particular interests. There was a strategy session yesterday with EBAYC organizers. They want to give five specific opportunities for people to jump on.
• Next week, there will be a meeting of the larger group to review the next steps; after the large October meeting, they will embark on a thorough research process to figure out what the best strategies are to improve the current and immediate economic situation. The group is trying to address the short-term need by developing a resource guide around FES to send to folks who participate.
• Brendan asked if we should consider aligning the families attending the 23rd Avenue large gathering with the FES work. Carl agreed that this was a good idea. Brendan also shared that the plan is to have the large meeting and then have residents sign up for different work groups. Ideally, residents will be a part of the strategic planning process.

Housing and Economic Development

• Jennie announced that they have finished interviews for staff position and have made an offer.
• The Real Estate Council is excited about the program-related investment. AHA is working with ESAA. Bridge is looking for a project. EBALDC – Sausal Creek and Blueprint. OCHI and Habitat for Humanity are looking into scattered sites for single-family homes.
• Housing work group will meet with OCO’s Anne McGovern to learn about code compliance. They’d like to learn and identify policy issues from residents.
• Goals around home ownership: neighborhood-based effort, including more local outreach and a neighborhood homeownership fair, and improved data collection to show neighborhood impact.

Health

• Kristen mentioned that we are trying to reactivate the health work group and we are also looking back into the health insurance enrollment program.
• Kristen gave a report about the Promotoras project. Next Wednesday, September 22, 16 health promotoras from the Spanish speaking pilot project will graduate. They are in the process of surveying the participants to see what topics they want to focus on for the next step – the action plan. The graduation will take place at 6pm at St. Anthony’s School Café. Karen mentioned that we should do photos and ask ESAA to do video footage. Fred will ask Elena to cover this. Karen will send an email to Venise about student coverage at the graduation.
• Kristen also discussed her interest in conducting train the trainer workshops to spread the promoter model throughout the LSAC, and to get help in adapting the model to serve multi-cultural populations. Kristen will be contacting people to gauge interest and discuss.

Newspaper

• New issue coming out in October with the theme of the Iraq war.
• They’ll be an interview with Olympic gold medalist boxer, Andre Ward. His gym is just over in Fruitvale.
• The date for the 23 rd Avenue town hall will be included in the Oct. issue
• Fred met with Kevin from Pacific News Service, who is interested in working with the newspaper.
• Let them know if there are any ideas for the holiday issue of the paper. Carl will get in touch with newspaper about the Eastlake Merchants Association advertisement.

Arts and Culture

• Elena was not present to report out but Fred announced that ESAA and AHA (Affordable Housing Associates) are very close to getting the cultural center. The site is at International and 23 rd.

MCMOI

• Sonya was not present to report out.

Early Childhood Education

• Jennie reported that Ruben and Kerry wanted to be at today’s meeting but there was mix-up and they will be here at the next meeting. She reported that the ECE team, an interesting collaboration of city, county and CBO, submitted a proposal to Casey and Haas Jr. to support their work in family literacy and parent leadership.

Small Grants

• Oakland Ready to Learn and Cambodian Community Development have agreed to serve as the lead agencies. They are planning a resident focus group for the end of September and hoping that some of the participants from the focus group will participate in the small grants committee. Agnes Memorial Church was given as…

General

• Kristen asked a question about how we orient new members and interested folks to the Making Connections Oakland initiative, particularly how do we show the complexities without confusing them? Fred agreed that this is a good time to be asking this question, given all of the current projects that are or will be doing outreach with potential members, such as 23rd Avenue, FES, Promotoras, Early Childhood, Small Grants. Ideas were to focus on this during our trip to Lawrence, MA and to look to ESAA for this piece.

Transition Planning

• Fred gave a brief overview of the summary and recommendations that came from individual meetings with LSAC members to discuss the transition plan. The summary of recommendations included: 1) asking basic questions around the current work. Do we need to create more work groups or drop some; 2) conducting an audit of the work groups: where are they; and 3) focusing the race conversation in our work rather than have an open-ended discussion.
• Fred stated that the most important part is to make sure that every work group has what it needs to achieve its work plans. The next steps are to provide the work groups with a visual template that helps them determine what they currently have in place and what they still need to do.
• November 3rd will be the first meeting of the joint site team-planning committee. This will take place right after Fred’s trip to Baltimore. Work groups need to pick one representative each to serve on this committee.
• Questions that arose concerning work groups: 1) should there be a communications work group that combines MCMOI and the Newspaper? 2) Is Arts & Culture a formal work group? Fred thinks not.
• How will the agenda change for the joint committee meeting? It will include updates from the FES coach and the Diarist, issues from the Foundation in Baltimore, and an opportunity to share with the Foundation what is going on in Oakland.
• There was discussion around holding one updates meeting every 5-6 weeks and one strategy meeting per month. The strategy meeting would be for members.

Facilitation Training

• Mara shared that she is working on finding out which facilitation group is best suited to meet our needs. We are still looking to do a basic training this fall.