There are times, sometimes rarer than we'd like, when we have the privilege to witness our own or someone else’s dream come to life. I had that privilege on Friday morning in Macomb County.

It was the opening of a new client choice pantry. A client choice pantry is one that looks very much like a grocery store, and families that use these types of food pantries have the chance to chose their food, rather than receive a box that is pre-stocked with standard foods. There is little variation or customization in a typical food pantry's box, but a client choice pantry allows for family dietary and cultural variations such as families who prefer rice over potatoes. This particular location is the first client choice pantry in Macomb County.   Read More »

Welcome to our NEW site to help us with organizing our work! I hope you will note events you are having, website links to share with the group and any other informatoin that needs to get out. Let's get busy!

Just commented on Mike Tenbusch's post about "Pink Slips and Layoffs" (http://www.liveunitedsem.org/page/community/blog/miketenbusch) ... as Denny was laid off yesterday, along with 700 of his co-workers across the country. He's going to be fine however, as we are blessed with a severance package and his Air Force pension .... others won't be as fine. Makes me think of the work we do here at United Way and all of those we serve .. and the importance of educational preparedness (esp. the transferable skills that help us cope with change), financial tools that help us to get and keep financially stable and the fundamental aspects of food, shelter, physical safety and more that just help us to cope. How many of those we serve, and esp. the folks recently laid off in various industries, don't know about what is available to help them - or even know to call 211. We have a big role in informing, engaging and utilizing everything in our community to pull us all together to help each other. If you are reading this and have thoughts about how this can move forward, e-mail me!! :::::::::::smile::::::::::::::

It hit me yesterday, during a workshop, that the work I've been doing in some form virtually all my life has been around connecting people - to each other, to ideas, to action, to "The Work". And part of the way that many of us have approached it (me included) was around "what's broken - let's fix it" or "what's wrong" or "what are the gaps". And during this workshop a new door opened ... looking at ASSETS. Now, yes, I know a fair amount about organizing things, people, resources based on building on what works - or assets - but the workshop was about "Asset Building Community Development" or ABCD for short. And in the midst of the workshop, when the presenter said "Don't ever waste a crisis" and my brain linked it with working with assets ... well, something shifted for me. I strongly adhere to spiritual principles of positive thought, action, personal accountability - and yet, for whatever reasons, hadn't connected the personal with the spiritual with the political with the community work with the generation of action toward NEW outcomes that matter. OK, so I've worked with ABCD in some form (it had other names ...) for decades (gads .. that makes me sound so OLD!), drawing on the best in people and places, counting on what worked there, adapting. But this felt different somehow so I'm going to have to figure out how I'll use this feeling - translating into action. Maybe linking the campaign workers that I walked with to something. Maybe finding a focal point (like one of our UWSEM initiatives) to get my own neighborhood behind ... hmmmmm......

Wow, what a night! With the historic win of Barack Obama, I can't help but think of the 60s and all of the people, now gone, who would so have loved to have been here to see all of this. JFK, Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and so many more. As a dear friend shared with me via a text message: Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Obama could run. Obama runs so our children can fly.

So now ... what will we do? How will we as a nation, as individual citizens truly LIVE this dream, this promise? It's up to us now to partner with Obama, the new government, without partisanship or arrogance, to move us all forward together. May God bless us ....

It was a slow day ... so slow that I wondered if my computer was down, or the phone line had gone bad again ... and wondering if I was making a difference in the community, in Oakland County, in UWSEM ... and then it happened. An "Angel" in the form of a co-worker/messenger appeared by way of an e-mail: it was the blog post of Bill Sullivan about the death of a person served through 2-1-1 ... the partner of another client. And there couldn't be a funeral because there wasn't enough money for it .... so now I had my motivation for coming to work: I needed to help however I could, and this day it felt like the best thing I could do was donate money to help the funeral happen. So, I did ... and thanks to Bill Sullivan and the others with him that day, a man was able to give an appropriate "goodbye" to a dear loved one. I guess that's the way to Live United ... at least for THAT day!