Notes from PUSH meeting: November 21, 2010
Revisit our mission statement:
Our Mission: To bring young people together to advocate for the needs of the underserved by working to eradicate poverty.
Do you feel this is still what we are doing? Do you feel that we have an understanding of what our mission is? Should we stick with the same approach? Do you feel we should be flexible?
Big updates for the next couple of months:
Daniel had a meeting with the director of the Fatima Neighborhood Center, and asked her how we could best service the Hough area. Her ideas were a bit more radical than our original plans, yet they were very much on the same page as what we are pushing to do. Our goal will be to help our families become homeowners. We will be taking a hands on approach and becoming accountable for the process of getting our families in homes that they can maintain themselves. Our goal is to collaborate with Fatima, who is also working with Habitat for Humanity and claim abandoned homes to be fixed up by the hands of our volunteers among other students of other organizations. As the houses are being worked on it will be our duty to work with the families as we originally planned. We will focus on financial literacy, connecting parents to resources, and working with the children in any way that we can to help them with school and anything else. We will be doing so with the end goal of our families being able to own and have their own homes. This new project will not only give our families more incentive to stick with us but gives PUSH clearer goals for the families we work with.
Our first step to getting involved with Fatima and connecting with families will take place on DECEMBER 17th, so please keep that day clear because this is a very important event for us. Fatima is holding a "Toyland, Joyland Drive" for families with children. This will not only allow us to better introduce ourselves to the community but will give us a chance to work together again doing something that will be a lot of fun.
Another step will take place in January [exact date and time to be announced] – We will have the opportunity to meet with the many different non-profit and service agencies involved in the community. This will be a great learning experience for everyone and a chance for us to put ourselves out there as a valuable force for the community. So look forward to more details about this meeting.
We also discussed our values and the idea of “branding” as far as what we do and what we stand for.
Some things we came up with were:
-Loyalty
-The idea of people helping people
-“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” MLK
If you weren’t able to make it to the meeting feel free to add to anything discussed in this post
We also went through a SWOT analysis [Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats]
This is what we came up for each [again feel free to add your thoughts]
STRENGTHS:
-Manpower
-Will and determination
-Intentions
-Ambitions
-Focused
-Good chemistry as a group
-History [success at Mt. Vernon]
-Strong Network of credible people/organizations
WEAKNESSES:
-Communication
-Not keeping network updated
-Implementation and follow through
-Funding
-Exposure
-Recruitment
OPPORTUNITIES:
-Lack of funds can lead to creativity
-Positive influence
-Education [ourselves and others]
-Possible Youth Summit
-Time
THREATS:
-Maintaining momentum
-Maintaining relationships
-Competition for resources
Our initial goals starting in December:
1) Improve the standing of the families we will be working with
2) Create a presence here at CSU
3) Create a presence in the Community
4) More internal organization and coordination
Miscellaneous:
· We’ll be working to get GoogleWave up and running so we can have a more fluid means of communicating with one another.
· Building buzz at CSU - - Something during the holidays to spark student interest, possibly organize something during finals that will offer a relaxing, welcoming, care-free environment.
· PUSH members CHRISTMAS PARTYY!
This wraps up the discussion we had on Sunday.
Hopefully after reading this everyone else is as excited as we have become about this new road we’ll be taking on. We have such a great opportunity here to follow through and really validate our organization. We need everyone on the same page and everyone to be excited about pushing forward. We really want to focus on all of our strengths and the different creative ideas we can all bring to the table. Our possibilities are endless and we need to be fearless as we move forward to the next page of PUSH.
