OIC receives two-year grant.
By Mark Hostutler
The Alliance for Health Equity (AHE) will award a two-year grant in the amount of $225,000 to the Chester County OIC (Opportunities Industrialization Center) for the Homelessness and Unemployment in Coatesville Collective.
The collective aims to help people live healthy and well by increasing employment, living wages, and housing stability for 18- to 24-year-old adults of color living in Coatesville.
The AHE began a three-phase process to implement a Collective Impact model for the Homelessness and Unemployment in Coatesville Collective. Collective Impact is a disciplined, cross-sector approach to solving complex social and environmental issues on a large scale.
“Collective Impact lays the foundation for iterative and aligned responses to the needs of the underserved in our community,” said Joyce Chester, President of the Chester County OIC. “Working together, our local service agencies can leverage our resources to provide responses to real health and wellness needs in our community, and do so in real time.”
Collective Impact includes five conditions and three pre-conditions, which, when applied in a comprehensive way, have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in addressing a broad range of issues. Collective Impact is also very much an evolving body whose effectiveness is being accelerated as the growing number of practitioners share their insights and experiences.
“We view this investment as a long-term strategy to build the capacity of the Coatesville ecosystem,” said Vanessa Briggs, CEO of The Alliance for Health Equity. “Through working collaboratively, we will be able to identify service gaps, adapt service models, and eventually influence systems. Ultimately, we hope to have a significant impact on housing stability, employment, and living wages in Coatesville.”
The Chester County OIC will serve as the backbone organization on behalf of the Coatesville Collective. In this capacity, the OIC will convene 20-plus partners and moderate the delivery of the collective’s evolving goal and theory of change. Implementation will focus on building capacity and setting strategic direction for the Coatesville Collective, with the intention to streamline, integrate, and reduce redundancy among service providers by addressing the inequities within homelessness, unemployment, and case management services.
Three primary goals were established to guide the work of the Coatesville Collective’s use of an evidenced-based model and tools:
- Build community capacity to address homelessness and unemployment complexities among men and women of color between 18 and 24 years old
- Create iterative processes and feedback loops that facilitate integration and coordination of transparent cross-sector partnerships to leverage expertise, program and service delivery, and resources
- Develop a project management process and structure that supports efficient use of time and accountability among the collective group
