All Things Are Possible

On Thursday, December 11th, Jesse Utz facilitated members of previous Study Circles to share the dialogues of the different group suggestions to move the community forward in an effort to reduce poverty. Each group presented its ideas.

The Sunday group, led by Kevin Lind, imagined that our community could be "A community welcoming opportunity and tradition."




Mary Schilling explained that her Thursday group envisioned this community as embracing the ideals of "unity, harmony, growth, vision, and opportunity."


Another Thursday Study Circle team, explained by Bob Lambert, discovered that this community already supports many resources, including food banks and transportation systems, but that not everyone knows about them. People are unaware partly because of the many different entities represented by our community: five towns, four counties, two park systems, and the Colville Conferderated Tribes. Shelly Stine already has created a resource book based on these areas.

The consensus of this grass-roots group of engaged citizens is to consider these possibilites:
a community center, economic development, child care, community resource guide, elderly care, and town consolidation.



Next, the participants chose areas of focus to begin a process of problem-solving. Each Action Team/Task Force will recruit more people to be involved; the goal is to energize the community into actions needed to complete the solutions.

Rick Morton's comment summed up the general feeling of hope: "If we can make a sense of community, then maybe we can progress to unity."

With that idea, and with new members (hopefully YOU), these task forces will
begin the basic actions:

Future Action Meetings

Community Center
Focus Leader: Mary Schilling
Amanda Poch
Steve Carson

Next meeting:
January 8th
5:30 PM
Siam

Resource Guide and Resource Center
Focus Leader: Shelly Stine
Alan Cain
Sheri Edwards
Roberta Haines

Next meeting:
January 8th
5:30 PM
Alan’s

Economic Development
Focus Leader: Rick Morton
Scott Hunter

Next meeting:
January 8th
7:00 PM
Rick’s

Child Care
Focus Leader: Kevin Lind

Next meeting:
January 24th
2:00 PM
Town Hall Meeting
Community Church, Coulee Dam

Future Teams:
Town Consolidation
Elderly Care

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Finally, Nate Piturachsatit explained that the Leadership Plenty Team (Amanda Poch, Jesse Utz, and Nate) will begin training community members in civic skills to identify problems and plan actions to solve those problems. Those meetings commence from January 7th to March 18 with clock hours available. Come to some or all of the meetings at the Community Church to develop skills that will benefit you in many ways: personal, community, work, politics, etc.

This is a process -- not all citizens have participated in every meeting, but each knows that the goal is to engage the citizens of this community to help solve the problems of poverty by participating on three levels as each citizen can: individual, group, and community. The action/task groups above are starting points, and not all members will attend all meetings. So, please, consider attending some of the meetings to help out. Contact Mary Schilling at 633 3033 or mschilling@gcdsd.org

Come help develop the "unity" in "community."

As Amanda Poch understands after her training, "All things are possible."

Join us:

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HORIZONS: Community Leaders Reducing Poverty
Working together to move from poverty to prosperity for all.

Contact Mary Schilling at 633 3033 or mschilling@gcdsd.org