Montrose/Delta "One Community" Initiative

Overview

The Colorado Trust Supporting Immigrants and Refugee Families Initiative (SIRFI) began with funding for projects focusing on Refugees between 2000-2004 .   The second part of the initiative provided funding to 10 communities to focus specifically on immigrant integration.   The Second Cycle in the fall of 2006 funded an additional 9 communities at which time ‘One Community' of Montrose/Delta joined the counties of Boulder, El Paso, Gunnison, Lake, Mesa, Morgan, Pueblo, Summit, Denver, La Plata, Rout and Moffat, and the cities of Aspen, Parachute, Littleton, Greeley, Evans, Aurora, Commerce City, Telluride and the San Luis Valley for a total of 19 communities working on community integration throughout the State.

The Partners for SIFRI are The Colorado Trust, The Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning, both of Denver , and The Association for the Study and Development of Community (ASDC), of Maryland .   The Trust provides the funding, leadership and creates strategy for the initiative.   The Spring Institute provides the administration of the project and coordinates the Technical Assistance and project consultants.   The project   Consultant /Facilitator helps build the collaborative, facilitates design and delivery of projects and is the liason for the local grantees.   Salvador Acuna is The Spring Institute Consultant for the Montrose/Delta project.   The ASDC provides technical assistance as part of an on-going evaluation process throughout the implementation phase of the initiative.   They also have a wealth of research data available for grantee use.

The ‘One Community' project will go through four general phases:   Discover, Dream, Design and Deliver.   The Discover phase includes building the collaborative and the Planning Team, deciding the group norms and the way decisions will be reached, determining what is already happening to support integration in the communities and identifying the personal skills and assets of the Planning Team.   There will be a 3 hour Project Management Session to map out a timeline and make decisions about community events.   The Dream phase will include community forums which will bring as many participants from the immigrant and receiving communities to the table as possible to discuss common visions for integration.   The first forum is scheduled in Olathe , Saturday, May 12 th , 2-5pm, Olathe High School .   This vision phase will naturally lead to the Design phase during which the plan will be finalized.   The entire process is the 8 month planning phase of the project.   Once the plan is submitted to The Colorado Trust it will be reviewed and the Deliver, or implementation, phase will begin.   The Trust has committed $75,000/yr for 4 years for implementation of the plans.   ‘One Community' has targeted the end of August, 2007, for the completion of the planning process.