In late October, DIP-IN held its second All Steering Committee meeting of the year—a gathering we hold twice a year where all three DIP-IN Steering Committees come together to share a meal, network, reflect on previous months’ work, and plan for the future.
One unique component of these All Steering Committee meetings is that the locations rotate each time, so each DIP-IN community is able to highlight a local organization or partner they work with that is an asset to their community.
The October meeting was held in DIP-IN’s Near Northwest Community at Aspire House, an organization led by Sharon Clark. Aspire House has been a key DIP-IN partner since 2021 as the lead organization hosting Sunday Suppers, which started as small gatherings and have continued to grow into events often hosting upwards of 100-200 community residents.
Every meeting continues to be unique, which has been exciting for the DIP-IN communities. Past meetings have focused on brainstorming future DIP-IN priorities, providing community updates, and hosting Eli Lilly’s Connecting Hearts Abroad program.
At this meeting, the DIP-IN Evaluation Team shared an engaging slideshow that displayed overall project impact through numbers, including Community Health Improvement Project (CHIP) data. This showed the steering committees how many projects each has supported, total dollars going to those projects, and how many people in the communities have been engaged by each project.
After viewing the slideshow, steering committee members were then able to have “speed dating” style informational sessions with CHIP partners from each community, where partners were able to provide an overview of their project or initiative that was supported by a DIP-IN steering committee.
Through this activity, steering committees were able to hear about projects happening in other communities and meet with the leaders of those projects to think about future collaborations or ideas of what might be possible in their own communities.
Thank you to Belmont Beach, Black Worldschoolers Mobile Bookstore, Elephant Gardens, Inferno Step, Plant to Plate, and Riverside Riders for sharing your projects with our larger community group. And thank you to our steering committee members for continuing to bring their energy to the table for their communities.
Click through the slideshow below to see photos from the meeting!
