Cerca Solutions’ Post

October REACH Newsletter: October REACH Newsletter: In this month's issue of REACH: LRM Stakeholders are hard at work preparing objectives and strategies that will inform Maryland's Multisector Plan for Aging (MPA). Learn why an MPA is so important to all Marylanders, and how you can participate in paving the way for a Longevity Ready Maryland. Also mentioned in this month's edition: Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), Maryland Department of Planning, Chelsea Hayman, Deputy Director, Special Population Programs at DHCD

At a recent The Aspen Institute Ascend event, I was describing the work of Advancing Communities for Equity with a new connection, Kat Kaufmann of The Bridgespan Group. She is a passionate early childhood advocate who had wonderful questions about our work. The one that I continue to reflect on is this: "Who is community?" My answer at the time was that we combine quantitative data (census tracts, enrollment data, community surveys, eligibility information, and the like) with what we learn in conversation. Who are the individuals and organizations in the community who are trusted by children and families? Where do they turn for resources, help, and guidance? Sometimes this starts with one or two names. Our goal is that by the end of our work, we have weaved together connections between systems and trusted community partners, to enhance collaboration and build communication that leads to stronger families. At the same time as this mixer, I began a re-read of @bell hooks' "Belonging: A culture of place" and I know that my description of community is too narrow. Community is where families feel safe and cared for, rejuvenated and seen, supported and whole. Healed. The supports offered by systems are by their very nature bureaucratic in administration and delivery. Through community partnerships, systems can tap into what works for families. This will require widening the table, sharing resources, reconsidering how power is operating, and doing things differently than we have in existing systems. What might we accomplish if people were more connected to each other and to the resources intended to support them? That is the the work of Advancing Communities for Equity. I am excited to share more about our work on this page. Thanks for the follow.

In Chicago, we don’t wait for change; we make it happen. Now is the time to come together, support one another, and empower our neighborhoods. Here are ten ways to create positive change right here in our community: ✨️Engage in Civic Dialogue – Let’s have open, respectful conversations across backgrounds. Share stories and listen to each other. ✨️Prioritize Wellness – Personal well-being fuels community strength. Let’s care for our mental, physical, and financial health. ✨️Support Local Businesses – Shopping local boosts our neighborhoods and keeps our economy thriving. ✨️Volunteer and Give Back – Whether mentoring, feeding a family, or cleaning up, each of us can make a difference. ✨️Stay Informed and Educate – Knowledge empowers us to make choices that strengthen our community. ✨️Promote Financial Literacy – Financial empowerment uplifts us all. Let’s share resources and support wise decisions. ✨️Build Safe Spaces – Help create places where we can feel safe, share, and grow together. ✨️Engage in Local Government – Attend town halls, connect with leaders, and advocate for our community’s needs. ✨️Promote Healthy Lifestyles – Physical, Mental and Financial health strengthens our neighborhoods. Let’s inspire each other to adopt healthier habits. ✨️Invest in the Next Generation – Our children are the future. Let’s be mentors, role models, and advocates for them. Together, we can make a difference. Let’s build a Chicago that celebrates our diversity, supports one another, and creates lasting, positive change for EVERYONE 🖤 🖋Signed, Ms.Cass DAUGHTER, SISTER, MOM, GRANDMA AUNT, REALTOR®️, INVESTOR...AND MORE... Chicago Association of REALTORS® National Association of REALTORS® #Leader #ChangeMaker #LegacyBuilder #LetsBuildTogether #MasterYourPeace #WheresMsCass

Thanks Andrew Kirtzman for your opinion. Our past never leaves us, and perceived indiscretions often linger. The past is the past. The parallel to discretions is a life journey of assets, and the manner in which we exercise them goes to the good of our community of people. Whether we look nationally or locally, we see our society in desperate need of leadership which will expand the value of citizens, and give people a community to live in, work in, play in, schooled in, and, yes, retire in. Let us not think of indiscretions as the fault of an individual, rather, let us look at how we can change our social, cultural and political structures so they will only allow the best of human behavior to evolve into greatness. I know Andrew Cuomo is asset driven and competency reinforced who will also surround himself with thoughtful and morally grounded advisors. In addition, a network of churches and synagogues will encourage further positive interpersonal discourse, resulting in a community of diverse and valued neiforbors which will work through their indiscretions, and then, we will get our great city of New York back on track to once again be the Big Apple everyone wants a bite of. Finally, we want a future Mayor Andrew Cuomo to be unique in a redesign of our city government so its agencies will not be part of silo operations, rather, are integrated to serve the families of our city, thus, maximizing the quality of our city’s life. Clearly, an article to get us to think and then act - not politically, but what do all of us, all our communities, all our political parties want for our great city and our country! (Dr. Jerry Cammarata is the former Commissioner of the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development and concurrently a member of the NYC Board of Education)

Something happened to Dearborn County. We used to be the community which let our historic downtowns deteriorate. We ignored -- if not abhorred -- the Ohio River. We didn't see much value in artistic and cultural offerings. We had an aversion to working together. Whether it is the IEDC READI program or the recently relaunched OCRA Stellar Pathways program, we are often told that our communities need to go bigger, bolder, and more transformational with our investments and future planning. If you sit back and take inventory, you will realize Dearborn County is already well down this path. Have you seen East Central High School's new natatorium? The snow-making innovation at Perfect North Slopes? What about the concepts for the City of Lawrenceburg Riverwalk project? Or do we realize the milestone that is the new, state-of-the-art cancer center which St. Elizabeth Healthcare just opened in Greendale? We even have one of the most popular night clubs in the Cincinnati area at Hollywood Casino's Boogie Nights. All this right here in lil' ol' Dearborn County. What got into us? What changed our "Humble Hoosier" mentality? Some might say it is just the result of riverboat gaming or Cincinnati's urban sprawl and population growth spilling over state lines into Dearborn County. If you ask me, it came down to visionary leadership and innovators. People which we at One Dearborn have the fortune to engage with each day. We shouldn't scoff at big ideas which appear beyond our grasp. As our track record shows, with the proper buy-in and prioritization, such ideas are more achievable in Dearborn County and Southeast Indiana than we give ourselves credit for. For Dearborn County to succeed in becoming an Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs #StellarPathways designee, we'll need people of many backgrounds, ideas, and desires for our communities to be thoughtfully engaged. It's a big table. I hope you'll pull up a chair.

It’s not easy to draft a year-end note that speaks to this unusual moment we are in. With half our community celebrating the changing of the political guard and half in mourning and trepidation, calls for building bridges are critical but can feel unconvincing. Even though I’ve spent the last 20 years witnessing people build common visions out of divisive topics—and likely cornering you at a party to tell you stories about it—these are times when humility calls us all to challenge our assumptions, even about what we think works. In that spirit, I had the chance this year to work with colleagues outside my usual Civic Canopy context who know the urgency of solving vexing community problems from their experience as a physician and sociologist. I’m proud to share the fruits (and vegetables) of that labor in this article that my friends Mark Earnest, Karen Albright and I just published in the National Civic Review: A Simple Recipe for Complex Community Change: Make Stone Soup. https://lnkd.in/gz9zADfm This is our attempt to offer a folksy and hopeful framework for how communities can come together for the common good, and in doing so, realize they have more abundant resources than they realized. At a time when people have lost faith that we can solve problems across our differences, and resources feel scarce, we hope you will find encouragement in the stories we’ve collected and wisdom in the stone soup folktale as a metaphor for community collaboration. This is the work the Civic Canopy came to do, and it feels more important than ever. If you would like to join the thousands of partners committed to this collaborative approach across Colorado, we hope you will stay in touch with us https://lnkd.in/gAhSHHkd and invest in our work on Colorado Gives Day this week. https://lnkd.in/g66jnJap

As an urban & regional planner tinkering in the realm of renewable energy, I witness firsthand the conflicts that can alight into a multi-alarm conflagration without a diligent and community-centric approach predicated upon what the amazing Bill Fulton outlines in his Stone Soup method of bringing together diverse stakeholders...take a gander if you have the chance! #urbanplanning

Hollywood 4WRD's first member meeting of November today (2-3pm via zoom) will feature a founding H4WRD Board Member and a CORO Fellow digging in on a couple of topics very relevant to our community: -- Louis Abramson, Senior Physical Scientist-Adjunct at RAND, will present an overview of his recent report on the troubling rise of "Rough Sleeping", a term that refers to unhoused people living without the protection of a vehicle, tent, or makeshift dwelling; -- William Chao, a recent UCLA graduate now working as a Coro Southern California fellow, will share the results of his recent field research on interim housing innovations across California, exploring tools and options that equip our local governments to build more shelters more quickly. William's research project was a direct response to H4WRD's 9/18 Community Summit and will offer a deeper dive on housing solutions proposed at that event. Not a H4WRD member? Not a problem. There's still time to sign up for membership and make it to the meeting today! Remember -- more isn’t only merrier at H4WRD, it also makes us a more robust, effective coalition. (And gets you access to our bimonthly member meetings!) Sign up for membership today: https://lnkd.in/gtBYtKrs #roughsleeping #alternativehousing #h4wrdconnects

As part of an ongoing and participatory engagement and implementation process, Co-Creating Kensington published the second of three reports today. Co-Creating Kensington: Alignment argues that a model for community revitalization that leads to collective healing and sustained solutions is possible when stakeholders come together with shared resources and when residents retain power and ownership over the planning process and resulting interventions. In a guest commentary published in the Philadelphia Citizen today, Dr. Bill McKinney notes “we are at a critical moment as historic efforts to address Kensington’s challenges are not reaching their potential and are often unraveling due to the complexity and intersectionality of our situation. “It is through trauma-informed, participatory, and comprehensive strategies that are preventative in nature that a path for community healing can emerge and ensure that residents are active co-creators in the future of their neighborhoods.” This second report builds on the first report and is an invitation for government and the private sector to align plans designed for Kensington with the community and through that, a reparative and restorative path for government and private entities to move from short-term solutions to preventative and evidence-based strategies. Co-Creating Kensington has always been and will always be an iterative process focused on learning from the previous step. With a list of suggestions for each of the community’s self-defined priorities and support from government and private entities, we will use the momentum of this report to convene with residents and other stakeholders to co-create solutions for each of the six community-defined priorities: public spaces, community health, investing in human capital, housing stability, public safety, and economic development. To read the report, head to https://lnkd.in/eyura-J6. You can read Dr. Bill McKinney's editorial at https://lnkd.in/egVmJ99n #traumainformed #participatory #comprehensive #restorative #communityleddevelopment #reparativedevelopment

As our 50th year approaches, we want to take the opportunity to thank our loyal clients, our industry partners, the extraordinary ESI teams we've had through the years, and everyone who helped us reach this amazing milestone. 50 years is a long time in any industry, and ours has changed so very much that it's almost unrecognizable from when we started. Since the 70's, a steady stream of newly identified contaminants and a continuously evolving regulatory environment has challenged us to learn and implement new technologies and processes, to work closely with a new level of stakeholders, and to deploy our solutions in the most effective and appropriate way possible. We're anxiously looking forward to what the future brings us. Again, thank you all, and Happy New Year. ____________________________________________________________________________ New Jersey State League of Municipalities BCONE - Brownfield Coalition of the Northeast The Commerce and Industry Association of NJ NJ Alliance for Action New Jersey Community Development Corporation (NJCDC) Learn how we can leverage our skills and experience to deliver a custom solution to meet your unique needs. www.esienv.com