The White House is Behind MCCOY's Efforts!

President Obama announces White House Council for Community Solutions

On December 14, 2010, President Obama signed an Executive Order creating the first-ever White House Council for Community Solutions. The 25-member Council includes people like Bill Strickland, a social innovator and entrepreneur whose keynote address inspired the MCCOY team at the Kids Count in Indiana Conference last month. Strickland founded the Manchester Craftsman's Guild in 1968. The Guild now serves over 4,000 youth and families annually through arts classes, career training and more and serves as a model for similar programs in San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Grand Rapids.

Strickland's programs and the Council for Community Solutions are inspirations for MCCOY, the community-wide Early Intervention and Prevention (EIP) Initiative we coordinate, and especially the Co-Locate Services strategy from the EIP Strategic Plan. Co-location means housing essential services (like job training, parenting classes, and health care) together in an easily-accessible and welcoming place for families and children, such as a community center or library.

The purpose of the new White House Council for Community Solutions is to:

1. identify the key attributes of effective community developed solutions to our national problems;


2. identify specific policy areas in which the Federal Government is investing significant resources that lend themselves to cross-sector collaboration and provide recommendations for such collaborations;


3. highlight examples of best practices, tools, and models that are making a demonstrable positive impact in communities and fostering increased cross-sector collaboration and civic participation;


4. make recommendations to the President on how to engage individuals, State and local governments, institutions of higher education, non profit and philanthropic organizations, community groups, and businesses to support innovative community-developed solutions that have a significant impact in solving our Nation's most serious problems; and


5. honor and highlight the work of leaders in service and social innovation who are making a significant impact in their communities.