Partnerships in Pontotoc County

I spoke of "Save the World Tuesday" last month and it was here once again today.
When we begin talking about partnerships in our community between our member agencies, the butterfly affect begins to be seen. One agency/organization's attendance at one or more of these monthly meetings turns into additional opportunities to partner.
The first Tuesday of each month begins with Systems of Care Executive Team meeting where those of us serving on this team are presented information regarding families receiving wrap around services, family counseling and parenting classes, then we merge with the Systems of Care Community Team, Pontotoc County Turning Point Coalition and Community Council where discussion turns to overall community well being.  It may appear that these are certainly a lot of groups meeting together in this second meeting, but in actuality it provides one and one half hour of partnerships and potential partnerships.  Today's spotlight discussion was the STOP Coalition (meeting on the 2nd Thursday monthly) which receives funding from the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET) and focuses on tobacco cessation.  Reducing tobacco usage not only affects the health of a community, but has an economic impact as well. This discussion could go on for quite a while, but not the intent of this posting so we will go forward.  The final coalition meeting of Save the World Tuesday is the Pontotoc County Drug Free Coalition with a focus on both substance prevention as well as promotion of recovery.  And today, a few of us followed this day of meetings with yet one more where the community members who partnered in writing a grant for our community (which sadly was not chosen for funding) to review remarks from the readers as to why our grant was not chosen.  Basically, our community scored very well, actually the same score as that of a few funded grants.  There was not much we needed to add, but nice to know what little bits we were missing - in hopes that next we write, we receive.
When reviewing all these meetings keep in mind that attendance to each is approximately 20-30, some of which attend all pull together to make a difference.  Of these meetings the total attendance (with some duplication) was 6 plus 35 plus 25 plus 8 (respective) = 74 attendees representing almost that many organizations/groups/businesses/agencies from our local community.
Many of these attendees receive allocated funding from ARUW, many are our close partners in grants, programs, etc.  Basically, what I am saying is that there are so many opportunities in our local area to partner it is almost unmeasurable.  If a question arises as to a need, if it is not being met, our community begins meeting to determine if there is already an entity to meet the need, if there is not, we begin discussing how to go about meeting the need.
Charity Tracker is our new best way to begin coordinating efforts to identify the true needs of our community as well as determining if there is an entity which meets the needs.  As we all begin using Charity Tracker as service providers we learn how much we can increase our partnerships.
As we continue to attend meetings and events meeting new potential partners we also strive to continue to invite more and more to the "table" to discuss what needs there are and how to meet those needs.
There are more partnerships than we have room to list; want to learn more? The best way is to get involved in some way.  An easy way to become involved is to contribute to our local United Way another easy way is to volunteer and/or attend community meetings. 
The sky is the limit when discussing partnerships in Pontotoc County.