5-county initiative would unite fragmented organizations and solve community issues

Her organization is currently funding an effort to create a nonprofit dedicated to improving the area’s quality of place — and bringing together multiple community stakeholders to do so. 

In Speed’s words, quality of place is everything that makes Southern Indiana a desirable place to live: its educational opportunities, its economy, its health and wellness initiatives. The list goes on. 

Andrew Melin, who is the superintendent of Greater Clark County Schools and also helping to guide CFSI's initiative, puts it this way:

“Ultimately, we want this region to be a desirable location for families,” he said. “As economic development continues to grow in our region, we have the opportunity to really bring families…to our region from all over the country and all over the world. So let’s make sure that we’re providing all the things in the right way to make sure that when [they] come here, they’re impressed, and they’re going to want to live and go to school and work here.” 

That’s been the goal of a lot of organizations Melin has worked with. He’s served on Region 10’s Regional Work Council, One Southern Indiana Board of Directors and Southern Indiana’s Metro United Way advisory. 

Melin would go from meeting to meeting, and hear the same concerns about the region from each organization. He began to think: “What would happen if all the groups worked together?”

He didn’t start pursuing that idea until his school system began putting together the Ford Next Generation Learning Program, a career-based learning model that GCCS recently implemented. 

Ford NGL began in Nashville, Tennessee, when its education system was failing. The city adopted a model, now called Alignment USA, to turn its schools around, Speed said. 

Alignment can be applied to more areas than just education. Here’s how it works: An organization identifies areas of improvement for its community through a planning process. Teams of experts are assembled and assigned to each issue. The teams work to create solutions regarding their issue, eventually recommending their ideas to a leadership board — also created after the planning process. 

Melin learned about Alignment and thought it would be an ideal solution to the fragmentation he saw in Region 10, or Clark, Floyd, Harrison, Scott and Washington counties. He brought the idea to CFSI, which is now funding the first three months of planning the initiative: a $15,000 effort. 

So far, CFSI has hosted one Alignment planning session, which occurred in April. Fifty-five community leaders from various sectors, including government, education and the business community, attended the session. 

The meetings are meant to identify what kind of goals the Alignment organization will be working toward.

A few ideas that cropped up at the first meeting include, unified and focused leadership, high-quality educational attainment, sustainable employment and career opportunities and accessible and comprehensive behavioral health and wellness resources. 

If any of those sound familiar, there’s a reason. Some of them were goals outlined in CFSI’s 2015 report: the Assessment of Needs and Priorities in Clark and Floyd Counties, which was created based on surveys filled out by 650 community members. 

There is one more Alignment planning session, occurring today. After that, CFSI will create a report based on both sessions. Eventually, the organization will form the Alignment teams and leadership operations, with an end goal of turning it into an independent nonprofit. 

But there’s still time for other community stakeholders to get involved, Speed said. She’s looking for more leaders, especially business leaders, to weigh in on what Region 10’s Alignment group will address. 

Melissa Fry, director of the Applied Research and Education Center at IUS, is hopeful for the initiative. She helped create CFSI’s Assessment of Needs and Priorities study. She’s also on the same Alignment guiding team as Melin. The initiative is “exactly” the kind of thing Region 10 needs to make Fry’s study recommendation’s a reality, she said. 

“We have a lot of great programs that if better coordinated could gain really big effects and have greater impacts,” she said.