An Awesomely Active October

Thanks to the 17 volunteers and 108 community members who came out to the Miller Spotlight Jamboree on October 23, 2015. 

(The community gave our Action Groups feedback on our SMAART Goals)

We had a ton of fun, braved the wind and the rain, plus got useful feedback on our attainable goals.

  

(Community snow globes and the bounce house were hotspots)

Gary’s Miller Spotlight is a Legacy Foundation initiative modeled after collective impact projects that have worked well on the south side of Chicago and in Indianapolis. Miller and Northwest Hobart are the first two Lake County communities to pilot the Neighborhood Spotlight program, which is a new place-based initiative for reinvesting in Da Region.

(Our Area Context Chairman discusses Goals with one of our community's fathers)

For the past nine months members of the volunteer run-Miller Spotlight project have gathered 4,013 comments about Gary’s very own Miller neighborhood from vested community members. These conversations have helped determine how we as a community plan to take action towards continuing to revitalize our neighborhood. By sourcing our information directly from the public we are hoping to identify which grants/ programs might best suit the needs of our community and all its residents. From our findings, seven themes emerged. 

 

(Volunteers logged the community feedback & got more interviews for our SWOT study)

Seven action groups were formed to address these themes: 

1.Environment and Ecotourism

2.Safety/ Code Enforcement

3.Education/ Youth Child Programming

4.Property and Blight

5.Area Context

6.Jobs and the Economy

7.Transportation and Infrastructure

  

(Face painting and crafts added flare)

For the past two months, Miller Spotlight’s 76 action group volunteers have been constructing attainable goals for these seven themes. 

 

(Kids and adults bonded while getting excited over the projects to come)

These goals will be crafted into our community plan. The notes received from the 108 participants at our Miller Spotlight Jamboree will be worked into our community plan, which will be presented at 2PM at Wirt-Emerson’s Auditorium and implemented in 2016. 

 

(Thanks to Brown's Inflatables and Tia's Cake in a Cup for helping make the Jamboree awesome!!!)

 

The first of our 7 action groups to host an early action grant event is our Education/ Youth and Child Programming Action Group. 

Come to the Miller Spotlight Harvest Festival and enjoy a ton of free, family friendly activities and meet your local educators/ youth and child programming organizations. 

                     

See what our community has to offer your family! If you would like to help decide and act upon projects that can profoundly change your community’s future, please attend the Miller Spotlight Harvest Festival this Friday (10/30/15) from 4-7PM on Lake St. (Yes we will have a Thriller Flash Mob too!!!)

NEIGHBORHOOD SPOTLIGHT UPDATE

Congrats to Griffith and Gary’s Emerson community for being the 2016 awardees of the Neighborhood Spotlight Initiative. 

Gary’s Miller community volunteers look forward to future collaborations with our fellow Neighborhood Spotlight cohorts. 

If you would like more information about Miller Spotlight, or to schedule an interview with Gary-Miller’s community builder, please email millerspotlight@gmail.com. Check out http://millerspotlight.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/millerspotlight for more info.