When Courageous Conversations Rockdale was looking for trailblazers to form their youth pilot, they sent out a call to all public and private schools in the county.
Sherry Farr, nurse manager in Lamar County, noted that while there are many aspects to the story of low birthweight babies in the county, the programming has been working.
“We will have more jobs than workers—and there aren’t enough kids in the education pipeline in K-12 who will graduate between now and 2025, even if we graduated every student. So that 16% not graduating on time hurts us,” said GPEE President Dana Rickman.
Coffee County is all too familiar with the heartache a community endures when mental health challenges end in tragedy. A cluster of suicide attempts within two weeks left a grieving community questioning how to prevent further tragedies.
Sometimes progress takes patience. This was the case for Lee County Family Connection Executive Director Patsy Shirley and Lee County Chamber of Commerce President Lisa Davis, who shared a vision to create the Junior Leadership Lee program.
Sometimes one conversation can create a seismic shift in strategy. That’s what happened when Rhonda Fuller attended a peer-to-peer presentation in Troup County after stepping into the role of executive director for Meriwether County Family Connection in 2017.
The program, a project of Polk Family Connection, which is sponsored by Georgia Family Connection, brings together local organizations and community leaders to help drive home the seriousness of the students’ actions and how they affect themselves and their loved ones.