Lower San Antonio (LSA) Collaborative
June 3, 2002
2:00pm
FOLLOW-UP
NEXT MEETING
MARCH 5, 2003
ATTENDEES
Diana Lee (Sickle Cell Health Network), Francell Haskins (Alameda County), Kiersten Figurskil (Lao Family), Sean Kirkpatrick (Lao Family), Page Tomblin (La Clinica de la Raza), Samantha Blackburn (Roosevelt Health Center), Jessica Pitt (Urban Strategies Council), Carmen Rojas (Urban Strategies Council)
COLLABOARTIVE, FOUNDATION, ORGANIZATIONAL UPDATES
Tony Torralba of the Computer Street Academy presented the possibilities for collaboration on a foundation grant, which seeks to serve community based organizations in the Lower San Antonio ’s technical assistance needs. The services to be provided include: technical assistance, computer maintenance, hardware update or disposal, supplies, and computer training for non-profits and clients. He asked that interested non-profits and agencies respond with a paragraph describing their technology needs and how a service like this would be of benefit to them.
PROMOTORAS UPDATE
Foundation
Fred Blackwell of the Annie E Casey Foundation met with Pat Chaulk, a senior associate at the foundation who manages the Foundation’s health grant making. Pat really liked the proposed project, but is not in a position to help fund it. Fred has proposed the Casey foundation fund the first half of the first year budget and seek out funding partners to fund the rest of the project. He noted that Pat seems confident that funding this project will not be difficult and has connected Fred with the California Endowment and the Wellness Foundation. In order to move the project as quickly as possible the foundation needs organizational 501c3 letters and needs the budget to be modified for a 5%administrative overhead.
Work group participants noted a concern about next steps and asked that Fred be invited to our next meeting to discuss how the foundation could leverage outside funds. Jessica suggested that the case be made for funds to cover the full promotoras. The budget may need to be reworked to have one Health Educator or Program Coordinator who is an English speaker and hire numerous promotoras who are bilingual in one of the six major languages in the neighborhood.
Assessment
After along discussion about what the assessment may look like the work group decided that an initial assessment of existing health data would be conducted by undergraduate students at UC Berkeley ’s Public Health Department. There exact task would be to review and synthesize existing data in the neighborhood in order to develop the framework for a community based health assessment. Sean and Samantha suggested we also tap into the MPH students at UC Berkeley to help the group write grants and develop the assessment form from the synthesized data.
Outcomes Review
Jessica updated the group on the new work structure for the Lower San Antonio Collaborative. The Collaborative will work in three core area related groups: Education, Family Economic Success, and Health and Safety. Instead of having monthly meetings, they will have monthly town hall type meeting where they will present the ensuing work to community residents. The existing work groups will be broken down into project related groups, i.e. the existing health work group would become the promotoras project work group.
The group reviewed the outcomes and made some changes to the form and decided to focus efforts the third outcome which is “Residents will engage in behavior that promotes good health”. The group also decided that they would focus their efforts on working as a collective or collaborative effort as opposed to placing the burden for the work and growth of the initiative on one or two agencies. Diana also suggested we tap into federal funding available for health initiatives in order to move the work of the group.