Coastal Voices Guest Opinion: Endowment a big opportunity

Many other communities do not have this interconnectedness. People might live in one community, yet send their children to school in another town. They may be employed by, or manage, a business in a separate area, and go out for dinner or entertainment in still another region. Their ability to work together for a common purpose is much less without the inherent connections we have here in our community.  When TCE saw our strong fabric of society, it wanted to partner with us because they could see success. Success breeds more success.

The second reason that Del Norte County was chosen was because we admittedly have some really big problems. We have far too much poverty, domestic abuse, mental and physical illness, school drop-outs, school violence, childhood obesity, and children without health care. All of these are local issues that we as a community have been endeavoring to solve for some time.  Now we have a new partner in TCE and a new approach to community problem-solving.

We need to recognize that this opportunity has been given to every community member.  There is no one group or agency that controls the overall process. Each one of us needs to figure out what our personal responsibility is to the process and then get involved. TCE has offered us an opportunity.

Imagine that we are being handed a blank piece of paper, and asked to draw a picture of our community that represents what we want to see 10 years from now. Then, working together with our neighbors, we will set out plans as to how we will achieve that future community.  The plans will need to be true system changes that address the underlying sources of the problems.

For example, one of the broad goals of TCE’s program is to reduce childhood obesity. Someone might say an obvious solution to this problem is to get rid of junk food. Now, getting rid of junk food might be a good idea, but it is only putting a band-aid on the problem, since it doesn’t address the underlying causes of our soaring obesity rate. A system change requires us all to sit down and figure out what has happened in the past generation, to create such a very high rate of obesity.  Then we need to set out a plan to fix this problem, and then implement that plan over the next nine years, so that 10 years from now we see fewer obese children.

What is that plan? I don’t know.  But this is the type of thinking we need to be doing now during our nine-month planning process.

Money follows success.  We have received this great opportunity from The California Endowment because of our proven success as a community.  Now we have to come together once more to successfully complete this planning period and the nine-year implementation process that will follow.

To get involved, contact Barbara O’Neal at  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or call the Wild Rivers Community Foundation at 218-6262

Dr. Kevin Caldwell is chairman of the Wild Rivers Community Foundation; a member of the Del Norte Healthcare District Board of Directors, and a family physician in Crescent City since 1984.