Explanation
BACKGROUND: This legislation authorizes the Director of the Department of Development to enter into a grant agreement with the Nationwide Children's Hospital Foundation in an amount up to $40,000.00 to improve outcomes for children and families by creating healthy, opportunity-rich communities. Funding will be advanced to the agency on a predetermined schedule, and this ordinance is contingent on the passage of the 2024 Operating Budget, Ordinance 3011-2023.
Economic wellbeing, neighborhood revitalization, and the overall health and wellbeing of our citizens, and communities is critical to the future success of the Columbus region. Numerous anchor institutions and other key stakeholder organizations in the region are focused on efforts to improve these things in the region’s most marginalized neighborhoods. All too often, however, the efforts are productive, but not well coordinated with other initiatives across the region.
With the launch of its most recent strategic plan in 2020, Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) chose to launch an effort designed to facilitate alignment of these efforts in a better manner, especially relating to economic development and neighborhood revitalization. To do so, NCH, under the umbrella of its Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families Program (HNHF), brought together a group of key stakeholder organizations and individuals with focused efforts in these two areas across the region, and with a particular focus on the Linden neighborhood.
This collaborative entity, the Community Impact Council (CIC) was designed to serve as both an advisory committee and a collaboration vehicle to ensure that duplication is kept to a minimum and coordination across efforts is maximized. The initial focus of the CIC has been on the Linden neighborhood with the intent being to build models that can be deployed across the region.
For effective work to take place, the voice of the community itself must also be present from the onset, and...
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