We need to change our thinking

Steve Eder, an investigative reporter with the Toledo Blade has begun a year long series (Sunday February 22, 2009) which will examine poverty and the regions readiness, entitled; Poverty Line, Unraveling the safety net.

In today's edition, Mr. Eder quotes me correctly when in our interview I said; "It [our regions growing poverty] is bleak, but the silver lining is that right now as a community we are still ahead of it. but we need to change our thinking".

And, we do!

As we [the service and funding community] change the way we think, we'll change our behavior. As our behavior changes, our outcomes will change as well. We have to think better regarding not only what and how we are serving the growing and present need, but we need a complete overhaul in the way we think regarding prevention.

Again I will say, an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure. That's why I contend money is not our problem. We just need to utilize our resources better by changing our thinking concerning the communities problems, from a needs based to an assett based approach.

If you start the solution to any problem without first identifying the assetts in place, wastefulness will result and the problem will increase. Which is what our community is facing right now. The majority of the dollars flowing into our community on a local level from state and federal funding focus on the need, not the assetts and resources which have previously been purchased and largely under utilized.

It is actually good news we don't know what the watershed looks like right now. While our window to act is narrowing daily, rather than wondering the possible or even probable, let's behave decisively in the present and participate in the always inevitable results of working comprehensively together.

Thinking for a Change,
Dan