Leadership Everyone (LE) is the local non-profit organization that seeks to leverage “servant leaders” to solve community problems. They’ve revealed the results of the Regional VOICE initiative.
These are distilled from 73 visioning workshops with 2,000 individuals in Vanderburgh, Warrick, Posey, Gibson and Henderson Counties.
“The sessions were to find out the visions of diverse people,” LE Executive Director Lynn Miller-Pease said. “So this wasn't just one kind of person, it was five counties, all these different demographics.”
The goal was to gather the ideas, hopes and dreams from a diverse spectrum of residents. One such resident is Chris Johnson of Evansville.
“I would like to see more diverse events in Evansville, I would also like to see a one stop mobile application for events, entertainment resources, food trucks, etcetera,” Johnson said.
The results of these sessions were revealed Thursday night in a gala event, with vision boards representing various sessions, hors d'oeuvre and a cash bar.
There are two main results. One is an online dashboard with all the data gleaned from these sessions, which is free to use.
The second is a list of specific projects prioritized from these sessions, reflecting what people wanted, like more “connectivity” within the region.
“We did hear a lot about boat taxis, and kind of interesting different ways to connect our region, which I thought was beautiful,” Miller-Pease said.
The projects are, “Connected Region,” “Experiences,” “Sustainable Region,” “Human Library,” “Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging” and “Supported Schools.”
LE is seeking participants for the six projects they’ve prioritized from the sessions. They’ll also continue these visioning workshops to keep that dashboard updated.
The first “Big Action Meeting” on these projects is November 16 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the Ivy Tech CenterPoint auditorium.
The next Visioning workshop meeting is December 5, 5-7 p.m. at the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library Central Branch, Browning Event Room.
Miller-Pease said there are already results from a Bosse High School visioning session.
“We found out that the teachers were buying food and now Schnuck's is bringing the food," she said. "We knew that the nurse's station needed stuff and members of the Deaconess team came together personally and bought things for that station.”
The dashboard has already been used to secure grant funding. The READI grant, Promise Zone grant and Connecting Neighborhoods grant have all accessed and used that demographic information.
Miller-Pease describes the dashboard as “open source” — open and available for anyone.
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