Pacoima Community Initiative
The Pacoima Community Initiative (PCI) began in 2007 in response to a surge in violence around the San Fernando Gardens housing projects. This monthly roundtable, a community collaboration comprised of parents, school staff, service organizations, law enforcement, local government offices, and Local District representatives is hosted at Pacoima Charter Elementary and functions to bring diverse stakeholder voices together to discuss and address current issues surrounding the school and community. PCI’s weekly newsletter serves as an additional venue for communication between partners to disseminate important resource and youth activities information to families.
If you would like to include your organizational announcement or update in the weekly PCI Bulletin or if you would like to subscribe to these newsletters, please forward all information to the editor.
No August PCI
PCI in 2011
The year 2011 brings the exciting opportunity for the Initiative to take an active planning and implementation role in the new work coming into the Valley including Best Start from First 5, Los Angeles Promise Neighborhood, and Public School Choice 2.0. This is all in addition to the regular safety and youth development centered efforts already in place and thriving due to collaboratives such as PCI.
December Bound
We had a great meeting in November hearing updates on the various County and organizational initatives. We also spent some time envisioning promises we want to give our youth through the new Promise Neighborhood grant. Information was also given about the workgroups formed as a part of the planning phase.
Following the meeting was a training by the County Deparment of Human Relations entitled, "Viewing Youth and Their Families Through the Trauma Lens," by Cherylnn Hoff where the group talked about the effects of trauma in high violence communities and the importance of understanding this while working with them.
Next month we will continue the conversations and follow up with the progress of both Promise Neighborhood and Best Start, First 5's place based planning initiative.
Looking forward to November
At our October meeting we had a chance to hear from representatives from First 5 LA and Youth Policy Institute about two new exciting planning grants coming into the community, Best Start and Promise Neighborhoods, respectively. We spent the time as a collaborative group listening to plans, asking questions, and visioning for what it means to move forward with these efforts in a concerted way to best serve and empower our families as well as fill in gaps instead of duplicating services. In future meetings we hope to continue working together; leveraging and building on the richness that already exists in Pacoima.
Sadly our community training set to take place this month was canceled but will be rescheduled for a date in the near future. It was great to see so many parents come out!
PCI October
Pacoima Charter School will be hosting our next PCI meeting. Following October's regular meeting, parent groups and community providers are invited to a training by the County Department of Human Relations to learn important skills in working with and within the community.