President's Blog

Issue Based Community Impact

One of the pleasures of being a part of the Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc. (AJLI) is the ability to take advantage of their conferences.  They allow attending delegates to learn, grow, and bring back valuable knowledge to Midland. Every year, the President attends two conferences, the President-Elect three conferences, and the President-Elect-Elect two conferences. In addition, we send delegates to the Organizational Development Institute (ODI) series. ODI delegates are generally up-and-coming League leaders. They attend a certain track based on either their current or future position in the League. Delegates report  what they have learned and we do our best to implement AJLI’s recommendations.

 Almost a decade ago AJLI began recommending, through these conferences, that Leagues adopt an issue called a Focus Area around which to design the majority of their community projects.  The intent was that having a clear focus would enable Leagues to be more successful. Focus Areas allow Leagues to tell the community, members, and donors exactly what they are doing to make an impact. After a great deal of research by our PR&D committee, in 2006-2007 the focus area of “Family Education” was chosen. This was the area where it was determined that our community had the greatest needs. In 2007-2008 two new projects were created (Face the Race and Family First) using the Focus Area as a guide. These projects, as well as our other projects, were evaluated in 2011-2012. Family First was not renewed and ended in 2012.  Due to the loss of Family First and the substantial increase in our membership over the past few years, new projects were needed. Last year, the PR&D committee did an extensive amount of research concerning new projects. After contacting multiple agencies, they found a common theme in that most agencies were seriously lacking in volunteers. Due to this finding, last year we created a partnership with the Rays of Hope Grief Centre.  The Junior League of Midland, Inc. now runs a Journey Summer Camp session and a HopeWorks session. We also created a partnership with Centers for Children and Families to provide facilitators for their KidsFirst program.

Jessica Louder and April Marshall both attended the ODI conference in the spring of 2013. After attending a powerful session on the topic of Focus Areas, they stressed that we should take our Focus Area even further. Now called an Issue Based Community Impact (IBCI) statement, AJLI recommends that the focus of our League be even more detailed. “Family Education” was deemed too broad of a statement. AJLI has stressed that the more detailed the statement, the more likely a League is to be successful. With the knowledge that even more new projects were needed in the future, Jessica and April were asked to head up an Ad Hoc Committee to research community needs and create an IBCI statement. In the summer of 2013, these women invited past presidents, past PR&D Chairmen, the 2013-2014 PR&D Chairman, Rooney Mestas (who was able to supply previous research done over the past two years), several current Actives, Alison King from the United Way, and myself to participate in this Ad Hoc Committee. Over the course of the summer, it was found that education is still a huge need in the city of Midland. Within that area, Keeping Kids in School was the standout issue where committee members felt that our League could make the biggest impact. Our goal is not just to keep potential dropouts in school. Our wish is to keep every child in school, from the cradle to college. Our Active membership voted and chose the IBCI  “Keeping Kids in School-Every Age, Every Stage” as the statement under which we will operate. We will do this by focusing on three different areas: self-esteem, literacy, and college/career preparedness. We plan on having 70% of our community projects within our IBCI statement area. This leaves 30% available to tackle other community needs. I would like to thank Jessica and April for taking this Ad Hoc Committee on and for doing such a great job!

As I mentioned earlier, we went into this year knowing that we would need another new project or two to meet the demands of our growing membership. The PR&D committee was able to operate under very clear guidelines when forming these new projects. Face the Race will be expanded to all four junior high schools in Midland next year, focusing on self-esteem. The new Reading Olympics project will be a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club and will focus on literacy. Scholarship Clearinghouse will begin a partnership with Midland College’s See MC event and will focus on college and career preparedness. Our new Volunteers in Midland program will continue to address need that was discovered last year, the need for volunteer participation.

I attended a session at AJLI’s Winter Leadership Conference in January on transitioning to an IBCI framework. The number one thing that I took away from the session was the need to educate the membership, the community, and donors about our statement. One of my goals for the next year is for every member of our organization to be able to tell anyone exactly what it is that we do. We Keep Kids in School-Every Age, Every Stage.