First Entry

This is my first entry on my "End Poverty" blog. I'm going to try to use this once a week to provide agency updates, items of interest, thoughts about poverty, and a general communication tool for anybody that wants to know whats going on in my head or engage in a conversation about Community Action.

This week went incredibly fast. I find myself saying that a lot but this week was unusually short. I started my week out right by taking time to have lunch with my son, Hayden, at his school. I spent a lot of time later in the week working with several other Executive Directors to develop a new state plan for LIHEAP, our utility assistance program. We're developing a plan to present to the Department of Social Services in January that we hope they adopt as the LIHEAP plan for the state. We want this program to be more efficient, meaningful, and effective. I'll be talking about that more in future posts. Today I started early with the Boone County Coordinating Board for Early Education to work on a more comprehensive, quality early childhood system in mid-Missouri. Head Start is one piece of that puzzle but a lot more coordination needs to happen to make sure families don't fall through the cracks. After that we had Boot Camp here at Central Office. All CMCA staff attend Boot Camp at some point after their orientation. This is an opportunity for staff to learn about ALL CMCA activities and help to consider how we can work together to improve our services and engage the community to end poverty.

Finally, I have to point out that today was officially Karen Cline's last day as CMCA's Administrative Service Manager. She accepted a wonderful opportunity to be the Executive Assistant at the Family Health Center here in Columbia. I'm going to miss her greatly but wish all the best for her in her new position.