Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Tom Wilemon -  The Daily News

The faces change in September, but the goals remain constant for The Leadership Academy, as one class of fellows wraps up its community service projects and another group prepares to take its place.

Members of this year’s class worked toward lifting the community profile of The MED, combating childhood obesity, implementing a school recycling program, assisting a nonprofit with inner-city revitalization and helping another organization promote startup enterprises.

The new class, which begins Sept. 23, will be looking for other projects to tackle in the year ahead.

“A lot of organizations know what we do,” said Roderick Moses, director of fellows. “They literally knock down the door to get their projects done. It is all about capacity-building for nonprofits in the city. We are not creating any new nonprofits. We are just strengthening our nonprofit base.”

The Academy Fellows program is designed to give high-potential, emerging leaders the tools, experiences and connections needed to become change agents, inclusive leaders and good city ambassadors.

The Community Action Projects (CAPs) vary with each class, but they usually number between five and seven.

Logan Meeks’ group opted to help The Regional Medical Center at Memphis improve its community perception. The publicly owned hospital was in financial peril because of state funding cutbacks.

“What we wanted to do was help The MED in any way possible,” Meeks said. “We’re six individuals from various backgrounds. We thought these various backgrounds may be able to provide some insight for The MED.”

The fellows started out working with the hospital’s marketing staff on focus groups. They then identified a bigger project.

“One of the things that we discussed early on was that some of the other hospitals have community advisory boards,” Meeks said. “What we thought was that since The MED did not have an entity in place, we would research how these boards are structured at other public and private hospitals, both locally and across the country.”

The group is finishing recommendations and suggestions for how the advisory board should be structured.

Caritas Village, a nonprofit organization in West Binghampton, has also benefited from a Leadership Academy CAP.

Onie Johns, founder and director of Caritas Village, said she looks forward to the fellows doing more with her organization in the month ahead. This group is working to combat childhood obesity. She needs adults to set the example for children.

Another CAP is to devise a customer relations management system for Advance Memphis. The system will help the nonprofit organization optimize its efforts to revitalize the inner city.

The Power Center Academy, a charter school, will have recycling program in place because of the efforts of another group of fellows.

The final CAP project involves LaunchMemphis, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the city’s entrepreneurial community.