Clinton School student Erin O’Leary partnered with the City of Little Rock to help implement a $200,000 grant for creating a comprehensive service plan to address community challenges through volunteerism. The city launched its service plan today.
O’Leary worked with Little Rock’s chief service officer, Michael Drake, to complete the first step of the Cities of Service Leadership Grant, funded jointly by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Rockefeller Foundation. Cities of Service is a bipartisan coalition of mayors that aims to assist municipalities in meeting the call to service voiced by the late Senator Edward Kennedy through the Serve America Act.
The grant, which fully funds Drake’s position for two years, is designed to guide the city in building a service plan focused on tackling three main issue areas: childhood obesity prevention and intervention, neighborhood stabilization and safe streets and environmental stewardship and sustainability.
O’Leary assisted Drake in building a coalition of community leaders and stakeholders, issue experts and local citizens active in volunteerism. Out of this coalition, a Volunteer Advisory Board and Leadership Council were created to provide assistance, expertise and guidance to Drake and the mayor’s office as the city implements its service plan.
O’Leary and Drake distributed surveys to hundreds of stakeholders and hosted seven focus groups. The information shed light on the current state of service in Little Rock, identified barriers that prevent citizens from addressing community challenges through service and suggested ways service can be leveraged to improve the community.
These efforts resulted in the initial service plan which matches service initiatives to current community challenges in order to utilize citizen volunteers most effectively to address pressing community issues.
The service initiatives will provide opportunities for interested volunteers of all ages, from students to seniors, to work on the three targeted issues.
O’Leary completed the project as her final requirement in the Clinton School’s Master of Public Service degree program.
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