campaign

Still Standing

There’s so much on my mind today.  It’s the Day of Caring eve in our office.  It’s noon and all the sites have been delivered their stuff.  Stuff is the technical word for ladders, wheel barrows, paint, stain, rags, brushes, shirts, you name it.  Amazing!  Tomorrow we’ll have hundreds of folks painting, landscaping, staining and doing all kinds of things to help agencies help people in need.  Special congratulations to Diane Mathews for saving us tons of money on stuff this year.  Her relationships with Shooting Star, Lowe’s and Leave Your Mark really have made them part of the United Way family.

Today we also launch video on our website.  We’ve come so far since our great social media task force and raising awareness council helped us join this century.  Jan Sanderson Taylor has done so much work on our website and social media!  She is an amazing staff member.

It’s campaign time!  We’re already at 23 percent of our $875,000 goal.  Lance Reyes is doing a great job as campaign chair.  Our division chairs are rocking and the campaign volunteers are so enthusiastic.  It’s fun only doing a good thing!

So still standing…does it mean we’re still standing?  Of course, we are.  It also is about something all together different, sort of.

Last weekend I had the amazing opportunity to attend Still Standing.  This is an amazing workshop with horses.  Not being a horse person myself, I was pretty ambivalent.  The others in the workshop were horse people.  Cheaters.  Well not really but you know how I felt.  We arrived, sat in the arena, and received instructions for the day.  Simultaneously, someone let five horses into the arena.  The horses galloped around and played, laid down, and just kicked around.  It looked like they were having fun to me.  Sort of the usual arrive at a meeting thing and check in and mess around.  Two played together, four played together and always there was this one watching, wondering, and noticing.  Again it was just like some meetings I’ve been in.  The group of Still Standing includes Anne Kellogg, Tedi Tate and the Herd.  I don’t want to share too much about the exercises because I think everyone should have the same amazing experience.  The instructions, while always offered with safety first, are intentionally vague.  What a powerful learning experience!

There are individual activities with the horses as well as a group activity.  I found it to be extraordinary as a leadership exercise.  Listening, watching, learning, wondering, noticing is something I can always learn from.  For me the exercises were not unlike community collaboration meetings.  There are groups; there are loaners; there are outsiders; there are those desperate to be included but too quiet to say so.  The list is long.  They are large and small and powerful and weak and loud and quiet.  There is so much to say and yet so little that needs to be said, other than this is an experience to be had.  I was reminded quickly of work in the learning community, the early and later days of the meth task force, the formation of CAN, the ending homelessness in 10 years planning group.  Check out Still Standing’s website at www.stillstanding.us.

And not only are we still standing, we’re rocking.  Check in, tell us how you are.  Enjoy the pictures and for those of you wondering am I moving fast in the action shot that has me blurry, the answer is yes!  Horses are big.  So are community issues.  Here’s a new and creative way to contemplate them.  Thanks Anne, Tedi and the Herd!

Hi there!  Now that summer's ending and fall is approaching, I've completed my vacations until the holiday season.  That means I'm back here.  And this time with friends, volunteers, great people doing great work!

This week's guest blogger is our board member, raising awareness council member and the Dean of Students at Southern Oregon University, Jonathan Eldridge.  He's also the guy I saw walking with his two beautiful children last weekend.  Jon and his kids had walked to get donuts.  Yep, I just gave him up!  And now for Jon's thoughts and the big news is this time you can add feedback!

Jonathan Eldridge...The United Way of Jackson County’s annual campaign kicks off soon. The campaign allows United Way to support dozens of community agencies and organizations that promote education (helping children achieve their potential), income (helping families become financial stable and independent), and health (promoting healthy lifestyles).

In these times of local, national, and global financial instability, there are those who think a campaign like this won’t be able to reach as high or raise as much as it needs to. People are spending less. People are focusing on their own (often precarious) needs.

I think we will meet our goal. I think we will exceed our targets. And I think this because of Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel. You may recall this children’s story by Virginia Lee Burton. It was one of my favorite books when I was a child. The story goes like this….

Mike Mulligan had a steam shovel named Mary Anne.  Mary Anne did great work—but over time Mike and Mary Anne hit upon hard times. In order to survive they needed to dig a cellar for Popperville’s new Town Hall—in just one day. Could it be done? With the encouragement of more and more townspeople, Mike and Mary Anne found a way to work a little faster and a little better and finished that cellar just as the sun was setting.

This is where you shout, “Hooray!” But Mike and Mary Anne dug so fast that they were down in the new cellar with no way out….until they came to understand that if they reframed their thinking, they didn’t need to get out. Their future was secure if they could go about things differently. Mary Anne became the new furnace of that new Town Hall. And so Mary Anne and Mike lived on in their newly configured, different-yet-still-critical role in the community.

The United Way of Jackson County is known for supporting reframed thinking and innovative approaches to local issues. The approach to this year’s campaign might be informed by this creativity. I believe that this year’s campaign will resonate in new and powerful ways with people across Jackson County.

We all see neighbors who have hit upon hard times. We all see services we have come to count on being threatened or eroding. We all see people not unlike ourselves—who seemed immune to an economic downturn—now unemployed or out of their homes.

Despite this, we know that our communities are only as strong and stable as we are willing to make them. We know that giving what we can in the form of time, compassion, and, yes, money will make the whole of our communities greater than the sum of their parts. And somewhere inside we also know that we could be the one in need, perhaps much more easily than we ever thought possible before. That alone creates a new level of understanding and appreciation for the importance of education, income, and health.

So even in tough times, by working a little faster and a little better, the United Way will continue to expand its reach, to touch lives, to exemplify the best in our communities….and help all of us reframe what it means to Live United.