LINC site councils forge the power of relationships to lift up community voice

Olivia Richards-Hyches speaks with fellow members of the LINC community site council at King Elementary School in Kansas City.

They’re just getting their first taste of the action, but LaKisha Martin and Olivia Richards-Hyches are learning what’s possible with a LINC Caring Communities site council.

“We did some brainstorming,” Martin said.

What does their Blue Hills neighborhood need? They asked the community members who gathered for the site council meeting at King Elementary School in Kansas City.

How about a mentoring program for young men? The site council has recruited a partner agency to get that rolling. Can the council help Paseo Academy students get summer jobs? They’ve already got some leads with Kansas City Parks and Recreation. They’re working up plans for getting them transportation.

“We got ideas flowing,” Richards-Hyches said of the first meeting in January. “It was not just a meet and greet. It was not just Kum Ba Yah.”

Martin is the chair and Richards-Hyches the vice chair of the site council at King, which, like the many other site councils across LINC’s neighborhoods, sets the foundation of LINC’s role in the community.

“The LINC philosophy,” said LINC Caring Communities Site Development Specialist Steve McClellan, “is rooted in relationships.”

People want to be meaningfully involved in the success of their neighborhood and in the health of children and adults, McClellan said. Site councils, which are under way or coming to all of LINC’s Caring Communities programs, bring together the people to help make that happen.

“The quality of relationships is high,” McClellan said. “We talk about what people like about their neighborhood, its strengths and weaknesses. You have to make actual contact. That’s where the real work gets done.”

Becoming self-sufficient

LINC’s site coordinator at King, Darryl Bush, sought diversity in community roles when recruiting people to the site council to start building a resource network.

“The main objective is empowering people,” Bush said. The group is growing with people with expertise and ambition to help with things like credit repair, home ownership, safety, communication, employment and more.

“Instead of struggling along,” Bush said, “you have concrete, win-win issues. All of these issues will empower people to become self-sufficient.”

The King group’s leaders — Martin and Richards-Hyches — are excited by the talent and skills in the room. They include church leaders, an artist who champions nature-based neighborhood development, a classroom volunteer, a principal, a finance specialist, an urban gardener, a teacher.

Martin is the district director for the Boy Scouts. Richards-Hyches is the parent of a King student and she said she has longstanding connections to neighborhood services, non-profits, churches.

“I’m a deal-finder,” she said.

‘They’re networking’

LINC’s site councils are spread out in school sites in the Kansas City, Hickman Mills, Grandview, Center, North Kansas City and Fort Osage school districts. LINC also has councils at community locations at the Morning Star Youth and Family Life Center and the Palestine Senior Citizens Activity Center on Kansas City’s east side.

Aspirations are high at Palestine.

The Rev. Maceo Thompson told fellow gatherers at one of its early site council meetings of his desire for a national community reviving, quoting Marcus Garvey that if you bring people together, you can build an economically strong environment.

Barbara Simmons talked of sharing good nutrition ideas, healthy choices, saving time and money.

The Rev. Maceo Thompson and Barbara Simmons share their aspirations for the LINC site council at Palestine Senior Citizens Activity Center in Kansas City.

Other proposals and offerings followed in that meeting and in subsequent ones, said LINC’s Palestine site coordinator, Yolanda Robinson.

And the exciting part, she said, is how quickly real action and real help is happening.

“This is fun,” Robinson said. “The meetings are getting better and better. When they leave the meetings, they don’t just walk out the door. They’re networking!”

One recent day, one of the senior members at Palestine talked to Robinson about troubles she was having with her house. Cracked windows. Gaps allowing critters into the attic and walls. Then came the site council meeting where a member of Community Action talked about opportunities for free help with home weatherization and critical maintenance for owners and renters.

“That’s why I do this work,” Robinson said. “Getting that information back to people. Networking with people. It comes full circle.”

Voices find impact

The schools and community centers that host the site councils are simply that — the hosts. The power of the meeting relies on the diversity of partners who join, like local business owners, clergy, neighborhood associations, non-profit services and engaged residents.

“The predictability of a regular meeting is important,” said LINC Director of Caring Communities Sean Akridge.

The meetings are scheduled at least monthly at times that each council decides works best for its group, he said. And the councils will continue meeting at community locations through the coming summer months to maintain their momentum.

Kiesha Collins with the Kansas City Public Library talks about library programs and opportunities for community involvement at a LINC site council meeting at the African-Centered College Preparatory Academy in Kansas City.

The meetings enable a “self-actualization” of the neighborhood “that builds deeper and wider relationships. It allows them to build their own social web of family supports for one another,” Akridge said. “It brings people together to build a sense of belonging beyond the brick and mortar of the school.”

The community’s voice, the parents’ voice, which has always been there, Akridge said, “finds a way to have an impact.”

Yes we can

It starts simply, like at Primitivo Garcia Elementary School on Kansas City’s West Side, where LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Veronica Caldwell, when asking parents for ideas for its site council, heard concerns about dealing with difficulties of home finances, the struggle to get ahead.

Parents and community members Brandi Ellis, left, and Kristen Jackson, right, pose with LINC’s Veronica Caldwell at a site council meeting at Garcia Elementary School in Kansas City.

One of those parents, Brandi Ellis, is a relationship advisor at a neighborhood Mazuma Credit Union branch and she has begun talking at the school about ways to help with budgeting, finding housing, building savings.

Ellis is new to the neighbohood, new to the school, but the promise in a site council buoys her feelings that “the neighborhood is up-and-coming.”

And she’s seeing the possibilities, along with the branch leader at her Mazuma Credit Union, TuJuania Scott.

In a conversation together with Ellis and LINC, Scott joined Ellis in the desire to help families with the struggles of financing. But there was more.

Scott has also been helping individuals who find shelter and aid at Hope Faith Ministries in the area served by Garcia Elementary.

“The amount of poverty and houselessness in the community was an eye-opener to me,” she said.

It is in this desire and the obligation she feels to help people that she asks, “Can we partner?”

And the site council’s answer: Yes we can.

By Joe Robertson/LINC writer