MOULTRIE — Colquitt County Family Connection has been connecting local non-profits and families with resources since 1999. Colquitt County Family Connection Coordinator Cheryl Brown said, the mission is still the same — strengthening families and children.

“The mission has not changed. We’re still concerned about strengthening families and children, particularly families with children,” said Brown. “For the past three years, our two main strategies have been focusing on early literacy from birth to third grade, and mental health has been a big one, as well.”

She said Colquitt County Family Connection is a partner engagement agency. “We bring agencies together at our Collaborative meetings, once a month, to discuss what we’re doing, how we can help each other and what gaps need to be filled in.”

Brown said being relatively new to Colquitt County, she’s never lived in a community with so many agencies. “I mean, I’m serious. My background is United Way. So, it is amazing,” she added. But, she said, where she thinks they fall short sometimes is communicating and that organizations are so busy doing the work that sometimes they duplicate services. “So, what our goal is, is to collaborate,” she said. “That’s my focus.”

Brown just celebrated her two-year anniversary as the Colquitt County Family Connection coordinator. “We are rebuilding. Rebuilding relationships. Rebuilding visibility in the community,” she said. She added that she’s also rebuilding the Collaborative itself and making sure her partners who need to be at the table, are at the table. “That’s really been my focus, the past couple of years,” she said. “There’s a lot of value in us just coming together and just talking about what we’re doing, how we can help each other.”

Brown said another thing that she realized when she started in her position was that no one thought it was a competition but they were just doing the work that needed to be done. “People see a need and they fill it,” she said.

Brown said they had been fortunate enough to have representatives from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine attend the meetings and it was interesting to see it through their eyes. She said, sometimes, since she’s done if for awhile, she will wonder if she’s being effective and then somebody new comes in like PCOM who tells her it was amazing to have all of the non-profits in one place.

“A meeting is successful to me if one connection is made,” Brown said. “After we’ve made our presentations and somebody walks over to somebody else and says, “Hey! I can help you with that.’ That, to me, is what I’m working towards.”

Family Connection has taken over and now spearheads the annual Teen Maze, a program for eighth graders, held at Charlie A. Gray Junior High School. Multiple agencies in the community set up booths that students visit to get a glimpse of what their future could be like if they make certain choices — good ones like getting a college degree and bad ones like using drugs or driving under the influence of alcohol. It’s been described as “a life-sized Game of Life.”

“That’s a perfect example of a need. They saw a need and people just stepped-up and said, ‘We’re gonna keep this going.’ I just think that’s so cool,” she said. “We are one of a few communities that still do Teen Maze.” Teen Maze will be held Oct. 7 this year. All eighth-graders will participate.

Family Connection hosts their Collaborative meeting the third Wednesday of each month, at noon, at the Arts Center of Moultrie, and it’s open to the community-at-large but especially to the non-profit agencies, she said. “Because each and everyone of us is concerned about our community,” Brown said. “We’re all concerned with making Colquitt County the best community it can be. So, there is a seat at the table for them.”

She said there was usually a guest speaker at the monthly meeting, then a Q&A with the speaker. Brown said her favorite part is the “Collaborative Share” portion, which was when each organization tells what they currently have going on, what they need help with and if they see a particular gap in services. She said the meeting also allows time for the organizations to network with each other.

Brown is working on getting strategy teams up and going. She said, during the Collaborative meetings, they look at their annual plan of what they want to accomplish over the year and then figure out how to accomplish those goals. The two strategy teams will address each of the Collaborative’s two focal points. Colquitt County Family Connection has made early childhood literacy and mental health its main focuses for the past three years. These teams meet separately outside of the monthly Collaborative meeting and then report back on their progress to the Collaborative at the monthly meeting.

She said each county’s Collaborative has focal points specific to their area and work to address them. “I like for our meetings to be working meetings,” she said. “We all get tired of just coming to a meeting, sitting down, talking. So, if there’s something hands-on we can do.”

The Georgia General Assembly established Georgia Family Connection in 1991; it was a pilot program for Gov. Zell Miller. Then, in 2001, the Georgia Family Connection Partnership was established to oversee Collaboratives across the state. By 2002, there was a network of Collaboratives in all 159 counties in Georgia.

Brown said that periodically Georgia Family Connection Partnership holds training for them at the Collaborative meeting. They present data specific to Colquitt County on things like early literacy, mental health and school absenteeism. The Collaborative discusses the data and it guides their work. Early literacy and mental health, as the focal points for Colquitt County, were derived from looking at the annual data.

“We want to be that connector,” Brown said. “Whereas, we are not necessarily doing services, we should be able to point you in the right direction. I think that’s the one message I want to get out.” She said if someone was in need of something, she could tell them where to get it and help connect them with the resource.

To learn more about Colquitt County Family Connection’s efforts, visit colquitt.gafcp.org or contact Cheryl Brown at 229-456-2361 or tamra.allen@emanuel.k12.ga.us. Emanuel County Family Connection will meet on October 8, and all are welcome.

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