Community engagement is an integral piece of the Focus on Prevention movement. The United Way Board of Directors, with the endorsement of the Stewardship Council, identified Sector Capacity Building as one of the priority areas for United Way funding in FY 2018-19. Because of United Way’s role as a backbone organization for Focus on Prevention, it is well positioned to come alongside organizations in our community, providing resources and support to help strengthen their work in alignment with the result areas of Focus on Prevention.
United Way has funded a project in partnership with City Ministries and Love our Cities that will actively engaged the faith sector in the collaborative efforts of Focus on Prevention.
Love Our Cities will develop and implement a web-based platform that will serve as a one stop shop for Focus on Prevention community engagement. In addition, they will work alongside City Ministry Network and other faith-based partners to implement a sector engagement plan consisting of summits and leadership meetings to help promote and support the platform throughout their communities. The implementation throughout the Faith Sector, and subsequently other sectors in the community, will be a collaborative effort with multi-sector leadership.
This proposal is led by City Ministries Network, one of the leading organizations to strengthen relationships within the faith sector, and Love our Cities, a leading organization for volunteerism in cities throughout the county. Their partnership in this effort will expand the reach of Focus on Prevention and United Way to new audiences across Stanislaus County.
- Phase 1 of the project launched in Nov. and is grant funding to LOC for web development and CMN for planning and internal capacity building.
- Phase 2 is scheduled for early 2019 (Jan/Feb) and will be the launch of the Faith Based Sector Engagement & Capacity Building pilot.
The Project Management Team has been convening regularly and consists of representation from
- Marvin Jacobo , City Ministries Network
- Jim Applegate, City Ministries Network
- Eric Jung, Love our Cities
- Menne Hall, United Way of Stanislaus County
- Sarah Bautista, United Way of Stanislaus County