Blue Ribbon agencies show vital signs

Those worried about the pulse rate of Arizona's compassion will be reinvigorated by visiting and witnessing the clear vital signs of our twenty-four 2007-2010 Blue Ribbon organizations.

Six social service categories. The Collaboration for a New Century has identified six areas that it believes are essential to creating opportunities for low-wage working families: 1) child development; 2) youth mentoring; 3) affordable housing; 4) job training; 5) family support (addiction intervention , counseling, care giving etc.); and 6) affordable healthcare.

What's so special about these Blue Ribbon programs?

Criteria for effectiveness.
If communities are going to support young children and their families, then new ways of crafting service delivery efforts must be found. Efforts must go beyond cooperation and coordination to collaboration.

In 1991, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services convened 26 practitioners, researchers, and scholars from around the country who were developing innovative service delivery for children, youth, and families. Three writers captured these experiences in a guide for integrating services, entitled Together We Can: A Guide for Crafting a Profamily System of Education and Human Services (Melaville, Blank, and Asayesh 1993). The Study Group based its discussions on a vision of "communities where learning can happen and the creation of a `profamily' system that expands the capacity of helping institutions and crisis-intervention and treatment services to work together." Based on this research noted above, the Collaboration for a New Century believes that our Blue Ribbon "best practice" programs have five strong characteristics. They are 1) innovative, 2) community based, 3) holistic, 4) collaborative, and 5) outcome-focused.

For a list of Blue Ribbon agencies to date, click here

What does The Collaboration hope to achieve?

Our shared goal of increasing prosperity for all will require a community wide partnership and a change in the way individuals and institutions think, behave, and use our resources. By profiling and working with its growing number of Blue Ribbon programs each year, The Collaboration hopes to call attention to proven programs that are reaching and changing lives, strengthening and expanding their community impact.

Join us as we roll back poverty in the Valley for one low-income family at a time.