about
WHAT WE DO
We help make Albion and Homer stronger communities by improving education, financial stability and health—the building blocks for a good quality of life. We have four impact strategies:
Early Childhood Success
We help children get a strong start in life, start school ready to succeed, and build critical reading skills to equip them for success in school, work and life.
Youth Success
We help connect youth with the education and support they need to thrive in the job market. That includes equipping them with the tools, resources and confidence they need to graduate from high school or secondary school, and get a job.
Financial Stability
We give people the education and tools to improve their lives and the lives of their children. That includes helping individuals get living-wage jobs and building a solid financial foundation.
Healthy Communities
We expand access to affordable healthcare, healthy foods, and opportunities for physical activity. We’re helping to create healthier beginnings and healthier lives.
HOW WE DO IT
We win by living United. By forging unlikely partnerships. By finding new solutions to old problems. By mobilizing the best resources. And by inspiring individuals to join the fight against their community’s most daunting social crises.
We’ve been building stronger communities for 130 years. We do it by working with global, national, and local businesses, nonprofits, government, civic, and faith-based organizations, along with educators, labor leaders, health providers, senior citizens, young leaders, and more.
Together, we take a hard, long look at the problems facing our community. We involve experts and leaders, practitioners and people in the neighborhoods. We work across partisan and income divides, inviting everyone into solutions. We hold community conversations to bring people from all walks of life into the solution conversation.
Whether we’re driving agencies to common outcomes, leading an initiative, or creating collective impact, we’re the get-it-done people. In every community, we’re the stop-talking-start-doing-band-together-and-take-on-impossible-task-masters. No matter the odds, we surround a problem, and we fight to win—with results to show for it.
But there is more work to do. That’s why we set ambitious goals, and hold ourselves accountable. That’s why we listen hard, and work hard to engage even more people in even better, bigger solutions across the world. Because change doesn’t happen alone. Hope isn’t a one-man band. We have one life. To live better, we must Live United.
Board of Directors
Isabel Nazar, President
Carolyn Amos
Donisha Brewer
Art Kale
Michael Leskowich
Jenny Wilbur
Eddie Williams
Shane Williamson
Marcia Starkey, Executive Director