Assessment
The vision of One Collective Elgin is to see all people in Elgin be able to have their voices heard, have access to the resources they need, and be able to make a contribution to the community. In order to do this, it is critical to learn as much as possible about the community. Therefore, the organization is committed to completing a community assessment every two years.
In 2020, 511 people were asked two open-ended questions: “Make a list of your top 3-5 biggest problems in your community or in the city of Elgin. Which would you fix first?” and “What resources or skills do you have that you would be willing to contribute to solving any of the problems in our city?”
To see more about the needs assessment, click here.
Focus Points
From the the needs assessment and accompanying research, 4 focus points emerged:
Housing and homelessness
Youth engagement
Unity and Equity
**Human trafficking
To see more about our focus points, click here.
** The focus point of Human Trafficking did not appear in the interviews. Rather, through research, it was discovered that there is no comprehensive work being done on this issue in Kane County. The focus point will be on doing more research on this important topic.
Collaborations
In order to make a real difference in any of these four focus points, the work cannot be isolated to an individual organization. Therefore the work of One Collective Elgin is to build trustworthy collaborations, facilitate the creation of common goals, and equip people and organizations with a shared network of resources.
In order to do this, we are working on establishing 7 Collaborations. The One Collective Elgin definition of a Collaboration is: a group of people working together to accomplish a common goal.
Based on the 4 Focus Points, the Collaborations we are building in 2024 are:
People who are unsheltered
Youth/Parents
Human Services
Government
Teachers/Administrators
Faith Communities
Business Leaders
Though each of these collaborations looks unique, they each go through several similar phases.
solve-problems
Though each of these collaborations looks unique, they each go through several similar phases.
In phase one, the members are identified. We look for people who are willing to help be part of the solution to the issues in our community, active in assisting efforts, and bringing on-the-ground perspectives to the challenges that Elgin faces.
In phase two, we develop a feedback loop. This means we are able to gain the perspective of the people in that collaboration, and we are able to distribute information about what’s happening in all the other collaborations.
In phase three, we develop shared definitions of the problem the collaboration is facing and establish shared goals.
In phase four, we build work groups, share our network of resources, and set in place systems of accountability to ensure the group accomplishes its shared goals.
As all of our work on the four focuses happens through our collaborations, One Collective works to ensure these collaborations maintain functional trustworthy environments for members of each group. What this means is that we measure our own success by the increased success of members of our collaborations. We are looking at the year over year success of partner organizations and with the hope of paving the way for increased success of each partner as well as the overall success of each collaboration.
If you would like to join one of our collaborations that solve problems, click here to connect now!
For a downloadable version of the One Collective Elgin Model, click here.