Working Together for a Stronger Community

In 2017, a book was published that looked at the sad, short life of an eight year old girl. Who spent a good portion of her life in and out of the foster care system before dying at the hands of her mother. Anna, Age Eight: The data driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment was meant to attention not to the deficit of services available, but rather the lack of connection between relevant services. And an initiative, 100% community, was born. You’re watching the Local News Network, brought to you by Pop’s Truck and RV and Service Master Restore. I’m Wendy Graham Settle.

It is a way of taking all the different silos of needs that people have and coming together to really address the root causes of issues. My current job, as an early childhood coordinator of course, we have problems with childcare and early childhood services. But then as you start talking to people, well, if they don’t have housing, if they don’t have food, if they don’t have access to healthcare, behavioral health, everything is interconnected.

One of the things 100% community does is to identify the key services that individuals need and divide them into two categories. Five thriving and five surviving at the county level. Which might differ from county to county, but often many of the services are the same.

You’ve got food, food security, housing, transportation, you need good jobs, okay? You need medical and dental care. You need healthcare. Then you need parental supports, youth mentorship, community schools, early childhood job training. You need all of those to fit together. And when somebody has all of that, you can address a hundred percent of the people.

The goal isn’t just to identify the existing services but also to connect the services already present. For example, a community may have a homeless shelter and a food bank, but on opposite sides of town. Without transportation, an individual faces that much more difficulty in accessing this services. Even though technically they have both services. 100% community works as an umbrella to bring together all the different organizations providing services as identified under the five thriving and five surviving categories, promoting cooperation between organizations and creating resources to make it easier for individuals in need to identify what would work best for them.

But there’s some counties that have been in this for three years. And the data shows that a county over in Las Vegas, New Mexico, that started this before COVID had come out better on the other end because of those coordinated services. In Las Cruces, they saw a need for a big family center where somebody could walk into one place and find out information on the homeless shelters, in the food pantries or dental clinics for their kid. Just everything like that in one place besides having to run all over town.

100% San Juan county is part of the larger 100% New Mexico initiative. Joining 13 other counties in New Mexico in adopting the data driven efforts to reduce poverty homelessness, and break cycles of abuse. To learn more about 100% New Mexico, visit 100nm.org. For more information about 100% San Juan county visit 100nm.org/sanjuan and sign up for their newsletter or to become part of the initiative. Thank you for watching this edition of the Local News Network. I’m Wendy Graham Settle.

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