Rockford Horizons Poverty Reduction Project

2009-2012 STRATEGIC POVERTY REDUCTION PLAN
On Tuesday, June 23rd twenty-three Rockford residents and interested persons gathered at the Rockford City Park to develop a long-range poverty reduction plan for the Horizons project. Horizons is a project of the Northwest Area Foundation in partnership with WSU Extension. Below is a very brief summary of that Visioning Session and our proposed action strategies. Their success is entirely dependent upon your direct involvement. Please join us as we move forward toward implement.

Background
As a requirement of the Foundation and the program, the Horizons Leadership Group kicked-off the planning process by conducting a community-wide survey during May. That information was tabulated and brought forward at our June 23rd Visioning session. During that session, participants were asked to identify the best possible poverty reduction strategies in three areas: individual asset development, community capacity and public policy. A total of 10 strategies were evaluated, voted upon and prioritized. The final step involved the Leadership Group identifying those that were most likely to succeed and then organized them into either short-term, intermediate term or long-term for purposes of implementation.

Plan Content
The months of July and August were spent by Horizons volunteers organizing these strategies, writing them up into a Strategic Action Plan, of which this is the Summary, and then sharing and promoting them. As mentioned above, here are the Rockford Horizons Poverty Reduction Strategies;

Short-Term (2009-2010):
-Grow a flourishing community garden
-Improved nutrition and food quality in the community
-Create/update Community Calendar
-Identify wireless/broadband customer base
-Create community access center
-Sponsor venues to show what town wants and will support
through a "floating" center
-Create the Rock Creek Internet Cafe

Intermediate-Term (2010-2011):
-Educate people to use garden produce in nutritious and
affordable ways and to preserve the surplus
-Create/expand town website
-Identify wireless/broadband suppliers
-Keep Horizons Blog up-to-date

Long-Term (2011-2012):
-Grow surplus food to be given to area food bank to help others
and to sell at Farmers Market
-Negotiate a mutually agreeable broadband/wireless contract
-Create a town placemat
-Plan, finance, build/buy our own community center building

As you can see, many of these strategies are ongoing and
need to be monitored and evaluated for success. Most also require meaningful partnerships with other community/county groups and organizations. As a living document, this plan should be reviewed annually and strategies reprioritized.

Next Steps
Now that we have an adopted Strategic Action Plan we need to recruit volunteers and begin implementing it. To support our efforts, the Northwest Area Foundation will make a direct financial investment and WSU Extension will help design necessary training and techinical assistance input.
In order for Rockford to successfully secure a remaining $3,000 training grant along with an additional $10,000 project grant, we need your active support and involvement. And now!
So we need your help! Please consider which of these action projects excite you and how you'd like to help make it a reality. Please contact Todd (at 291-4601), MaryLou at (291-3146), Vivian (at 291-3722) or Micki (at 291-3621) if you'd like to volunteer OR attend any of our monthly meetings on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays beginning at 6:30pm at the Harvest Moon Restaurant.