An initiative to continue to bring residents of Delburne together and a coalition working with wayward youth in Red Deer recently received Collective Impact Legacy grants from the United Way of Central Alberta.
The grants, funded by annual revenues generated by memorial gifts or bequests, are to support innovative and collaborative ways of addressing complex social issues.
“It has to be something you’re doing as a group. We want to try to encourage that because at the United Way, we feel that’s one of the ways to get to the root causes of issues, is the use of a collective impact model which brings everyone together to try and solve a particularly complicated social issue rather than doing it in a silo, so to speak,” said United Way CEO Robert Mitchel on Tuesday.
The Village of Delburne was awarded $5,000 to support its Belonging Delburne initiative, which aims to strengthen its community by connecting residents through positive storytelling, sometimes called Generative Journalism. Local media, schools, city administration and community organizations are collaborating on the initiative.
John Howard Society, on behalf of the Red Deer High Risk Youth Coalition, received $10,000 to support efforts to engage youth in shaping how services might be delivered. High-risk youth include those experiencing or at risk of addictions, victimization, gang and criminal involvement, incarceration or hospitalization, street involvement, homelessness, being a school dropout or those with chronic truancy.
Coalition members include community corrections; health and addictions services; public, Catholic and outreach schools; provincial child and family services; and not-for-profit service providers, including emergency shelters.
It’s the second year Collective Impact Legacy grants have been available.
Last year the Sylvan Lake and area Compassion Fund, which provides emergency assistance to people in crisis, and Central Alberta Poverty Reduction Alliance were grant recipients.
szielinski@www.reddeeradvocate.com