Weeks 16-18 (10/28-11/8): Alignment

The weeks now are flying by. With the strategic planning retreat on the horizon, the amount of work I have is steadily increasing. I’m also finding that I have more responsibilities. For example, on Monday (10/28), I attended a Ready Schools Team meeting, and reported back to the small workgroup about research pertaining to the academic benefits of having smaller class sizes (according to the Tennessee STAR Experiment, advantages were minimal and seemed to fade after the third grade; more beneficial would be improving the quality of teaching).   

I’m also handling more responsibilities internally with Redwood City 2020. I’ve been emailing the core partners for their own strategic plans and needs assessments, in order to get an idea of our partners’ priorities. Eventually, I will group all of their priorities under common goals (health, safety, academics), so we can see what areas our partners are focusing on. This will tell us at Redwood City 2020 what we are doing a good job supporting, and what we can do better in the future. The partners’ needs assessments will give us a better idea of why our partners chose the goals they chose, and will then inform our own goals moving forward.   

The theme, then, for this week is alignment. As a community collaborative, it is important that we are in alignment with all of our partners. While Redwood City 2020 wants to have agency in the direction it takes in the next 4-6 years, being in line with our partners’ interests is essential in ensuring that everyone can work together. This is example of alignment in collaboration is extremely valuable for my work moving forward, both in my role as a fellow and beyond. 

Week 14 and 15 (10/14-10/25): Architects of Change

As I become progressively busier with new projects, and as weeks begin to meld into each other, I’ve decided to cover two weeks of work in one succinct post. This post is the first of such posts.

I spent much of the next couple of days focusing on the Prevention Partnership project; I sifted through various clearinghouses online (some of which were frustratingly unusable due to the government shutdown) and recorded various instances of evidence-based, peer-reviewed alcohol and drug prevention interventions. I compiled the best, most relevant interventions in an Excel sheet and made copies to hand out at the Prevention Partnership meeting on Wednesday.

At the meeting, we gathered the Prevention Partnership partners and explained to them the call for evidence-based practices in the new work plan. Many partners, as it turns out, were already using evidence-based practices, though they weren’t aware of that. Others needed more help. In the end, though, everyone was on the same page. We used the meeting time to establish a timeline and other deadlines by which the partners should have their revised proposals submitted to us, so that we can compile them into one work plan and submit that to the County. Overall, it was a very productive meeting!

The rest of the week passed without any incident of note. The following Thursday was the monthly in-person meeting with Manuelito and Jana. We met at the Redwood City 2020 offices, and discussed my role with the Prevention Partnership, the importance of the upcoming Redwood City 2020 environmental scan, and opportunities for my own professional development.

The grand opening of a Healthy Corner Store marked the end of the week. Although the irony of serving pizza and pastries at a healthy corner store was lost on no one, the meaning of the event was significant nonetheless. It was a nice change of pace to be in the community supporting one of RWC2020’s initiatives that I had read so much about. Hearing from straight from the mouths of the youth that worked so hard to put this store together I hope that this is the start of a trend that allows me to be in the community supporting various initiatives as much as I read about them!

For these youth, I've themed this week's post "Architects of Change." The Youth Leadership Institute, who headed up the Healthy Corner Store project, is comprised of local youth who want to change their community for the better. They approached all the store owners, convinced them to give their stores a healthy makeover, trained the owners how to take care of produce, and physically rearranged and cleaned the stores themselves. These youth are setting the foundation for future change, upon which a huge skyskraper of their influence will one day be built.