Our Initiative
As a county-wide initiative, we work to bring all ages to the table to address community issues through capacity building efforts in different geographic areas.
In the first of a two fold strategy our coalition, (which is comprised of over 40 organizations with eight of them working together as the core advisory team) promoted intergenerational approaches among key institutional partners. We then worked in select communities in the county to promote leadership and capacity to build intergenerational strategies into their work. We have seen a range of positive developments in the capacity of different towns in our county to infuse an intergenerational lens into their community building work. Notably, one of the towns in our county (Sedona) has developed a town-wide coalition that now receives its own Communities for all Ages grant and participates as a separate site in the national network.
Other successful examples of capacity and alliance building in our county include:
- For the first time ever, the historically youth-focused organization Arizona’s Children Association and the historically senior- focused Area Agency on Aging worked together on a grant application to secure support for a kinship care program. The organizations successfully secured funds, worked together to survey kinship care givers, developed a program, and continue to share resources.
- Over 14 community forums were held to address issues of substance use and prevention organized with a broad range of community partners and residents of all ages participating.
- Based on data collected through the community forums a substance abuse coalition, MATForce, came forward with some unusual recommendations: Rather than dedicate new resources to traditional age silo-ed services such as prevention for the young and treatment for older youth and adults, this coalition stressed the needs for every outreach, opportunity support and service to be multi- generational. This was very new thinking and highly influenced by the engagement of these institutions in the CFAA initiative. MATForce continues to expand outreach regularly engaging over 100 volunteers a month. Updated information about the group’s success can be viewed at matforce.org.
- By engaging numerous sectors of the county in collaboration, MATForce and the Communities for All Ages team of Yavapai has assisted with bringing in over 1 million dollars to address substance abuse issues and has engaged over 300 community volunteers.
