About Us
As you read about the work of Community Partnership, one thought will stand out – the notion that many people, both in and out of the Partnership, are dedicating untold time and resources to the hard work of building strong communities.
This year, for the second year in a row, Springfield-Greene County was chosen by America's Promise – the Alliance for Youth, as one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People in the nation. The Partnership is in the business of "Working Together to Build Strong Communities," and we recognize that a strong community is only as strong as its youth. Our children are, indeed, our future, and tremendous energy has been brought to bear on building the Five Promises for youth – Caring Adults, Safe Places, A Healthy Start, Effective Education and Opportunities to Help Others. However, we realize that much more must be done. Our challenge is that 34 million Americans between the ages of 6 and 17 are receiving too few of the core resources that correlate with success.
Facilitating positive change takes time and resources. We have been blessed this past year with interns and volunteers who have devoted their time to helping us build Communities of Promise. However, as budget deficits grow and dollars for prevention shrink, we must also look for new sources of revenue that will enable us to continue our collaborative work.
In an effort to do just that, this year we embarked on a new venture – E-commerce. Having developed innovative and effective prevention material for years, we launched cafeprevention.com – "Your community's source for prevention resources." More information about cafeprevention.com is included in this report. We also received Youth Opportunities Tax Credits to encourage donors to support our efforts. All are exciting ventures, but none is more exciting than building strong communities, strong youth and strong families – Communities of Promise.
Community Partnership is about building relationships and partnerships to facilitate positive change; it is about designing new ways to use resources to help children, families and neighborhoods; it is about addressing community issues in a holistic manner; and it is about committed staff and community volunteers who combine imagination, vision, creativity and hard work to build Communities of Promise.
While much of our work directly impacts youth and the building of the Five Promises, we realize that building a strong infrastructure, in every sense of the word, is vital to growing strong youth and strong communities. Thus, we have tackled water and air quality through the Environmental Collaborative; homelessness through the Continuum of Care; the needs of the elderly through Senior Link; and the need for neighborhood revitalization through our Lead and Learn curriculum. In our work in 21 southwest Missouri counties, we have brought technical assistance and resources to communities impacted by youth violence and substance abuse, helping them develop their own prevention coalitions. Prevention takes time, as does changing the root causes of so many of the ills we face, such as our high rate of child abuse and neglect and the number of families and children living in poverty. However, rather than getting discouraged, we have marshaled resources to work on these critical issues.
Of course, we have not done this in isolation. As the Community Impact Affiliate of United Way of the Ozarks, our efforts and successes have been the product of collaborations and partnerships, where expertise, resources, and a passion for the cause have been shared for the greater good. Over 12,294 volunteers and 17 interns gave of their time to help us make our communities stronger.
While we may never see the final result of our many prevention efforts, we believe that person by person, issue by issue, solution by solution, and community by community, we can create something long lasting; something of great value. All of us have a role to play; the job is simply too big for any single sector or agency alone. We will continue to focus much of our work on building the Five Promises, for this is truly the only way we can become a Community of Promise. Thanks to the continued support of our board and volunteers, we have had a very good year and look forward with anticipation to the next.