The Community Foundation Holds Community Forums

Citizens voicing opinions on the issues

During the months of December (2011), January and February of 2012 the Community Foundation of South Alabama, in partnership with United Way, sponsored a series of community forums entitled, “What Kind Of Community Do You Want To Live In? Your Opinion Matters”. Open to the general public, the series was held in various locations throughout the eight counties served by the Foundation. The aim of the forums was to entreat the public to engage the Foundation in a dialogue on the issues facing their communities and what resources they needed to address these concerns.

The forums were well attended by community citizens clearly deeply concerned with the direction their area was headed. Foundation facilitators engaged the public, sometimes one on one, to furrow out root issues such as economic development, public safety and security and services available to the community (such as transportation).

Conversations in each community reflected the unique needs and dreams of each town, city, and county, but they also produced a number of common threads that seemed important to strengthening the fabric of each particular community—regardless of its size or geographic location.

 The dialogue threads common at all of the communities forums consisted of: more jobs for the new generation, the lack of preparedness for existing jobs that high school graduates exhibit, bringing more recreational outlets to the county to engage the youth, problems with communication-the difficulties of getting information to all citizens, including those without regular internet access and finally, the overwhelming  need for transportation to programs and services for the rural underserved.

 Holding the forums has allowed the Community Foundation to personally hear the issues from community leaders and the general public. We are tabulating all the data and suggestion collected at each of the forums and anticipate returning to the communities soon. The information collected will allow the Foundation to formulate ideas and better focus our resources into the programs and nonprofits that are best suited to assist the citizens in the communities of South Alabama.