(Coatesville, Pennsylvania) - The Alliance for Health Equity (AHE) is pleased to announce a two-year grant award in the amount of $225,000 to the Opportunities Industrialization Center Inc. at Chester County (OIC) for the Coatesville Homelessness and Unemployment Collective. Coatesville's Collective Impact Initiative will help people live healthy and well by increasing employment, living wages, and housing stability for adults 18–24-year-old males and females of color living in Coatesville by 2026.
“Collective Impact lays the foundation for iterative and aligned responses to the needs of the underserved in our community. Working together, our local service agencies can leverage our resources to provide responses to real health and wellness needs in our community and do so in real time. “- Joyce Chester, OIC President and CEO
The Alliance for Health Equity began a three-phase process to implement a Collective Impact model for the Homelessness and Unemployment in Coatesville Collective (Coatesville Collective). Collective Impact is a disciplined, cross-sector approach to solving complex social and environmental issues on a large scale. Collective Impact (CI) includes five conditions and three pre-conditions which, when applied in a comprehensive way, have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in addressing a broad range of issues. Collective Impact is also very much an evolving body whose effectiveness is being accelerated as the growing number of practitioners share their insights and experiences.
Vanessa Briggs, CEO of The Alliance for Health Equity stated, “we view this investment as a long-term strategy to build the capacity of the Coatesville Ecosystem. Through working collaboratively, we will be able to identify service gaps, adapt service models, and eventually influence systems. Ultimately, we hope to have a significant impact on housing stability, employment, and living wages in Coatesville.”
As the collective enters phase 3, implementation of Coatesville Collective Impact, OIC will serve as the Backbone Organization on behalf of the Homelessness & Unemployment Collective. In this capacity, OIC will convene the 20+ partners and moderate the delivery on the Collective’s evolving goal and theory of change. Implementation will focus on building capacity and setting strategic direction for Coatesville’s Collective with the intention to streamline, integrate, and reduce redundancy among service providers by addressing the inequities within homelessness, unemployment, and case management services.
Three primary goals were established to guide the work of the Coatesville Collective’s use of an evidenced-based model and tools. The three primary goals are:
- Build community capacity to address homelessness and unemployment complexities among men and women of color aged between 18-24;
- Create iterative processes and feedback loops that facilitate integration and coordination of transparent cross-sector partnerships to leverage expertise, program and service delivery, and resources; and
- Develop a project management process and structure that supports efficient use of time and accountability among the collective group.
AHE is partnered with Social Innovations Partners (socialinnovationspartners.org) to help guide the Collective Impact process.