In the Kitchen
by Mary Ann Steutermann
I’ll admit it – I have few domestic skills. In particular, I absolutely, positively do not cook because 1) I don’t enjoy it and 2) previous attempts have resulted in blaring smoke alarms and upset stomachs. Fortunately for me, I am married to a great cook who both enjoys the process of creating a fine meal and actually produces dishes that people find not only edible but downright delicious. Over the years, I have watched him in the kitchen preparing a meal, and I’ve learned his secret to success – preparation.
The Right Ingredients
I was surprised to learn that most of my husband’s culinary efforts go into selecting the best ingredients and then spending quite a bit of time cutting, chopping, dicing, and seasoning them. In fact, he probably spends at least twice as much time preparing the ingredients as he does actually heating something on the stove or baking it in the over. Similarly, Metro United Way has been hard at work preparing to develop a strategy map that will guide our efforts in the coming years as we work to ensure that all of our children arrive at kindergarten ready to be successful and that at least 87% of them complete high school by earning their diplomas.
Just as it’s tempting to jump right into to turning up the heat on the stove without taking the time to chop and season the ingredients first, it’s tempting for an organization to jump too quickly to decisions about its future work without doing the necessary leg work in preparation. But we won’t make that common mistake. In fact, we’ve been hard at work in the kitchen for several months now.
Engaging the Community
Before settling on our specific strategies in support of educational progress, we have been doing a lot of homework. An essential part of this has been engaging the community in various ways in order to make sure we have all of the data and information needed to make good decisions. We have been working with various groups to get their feedback on our emerging role as leaders in community support of educational progress. So far we have engaged the community through:
• Donor conversations
• Colleague discussions
• CEO calls
• CSC committee discussions
• Council of Agency Executives discussions
• CI Cabinet conversations
Another major engagement opportunity we have embarked upon is an Education Research Project in conjunction with Kentucky Youth Advocates. In addition to providing the latest research on how to promote high school graduation and reporting on essential quantitative data by county, the project has also engaged superintendents, principals, government officials, business persons, faith-based leaders, parent organization leaders, service providers, and various other community movers and shakers on their perceptions of both strengths as well as perceived needs. This will allow us to not only identify what is going on in each county in each of the 5 “tipping points” of the UWW education framework (kindergarten readiness, 4th grade reading, middle school transition, high school graduation, and college/career), but it will also let us also know what the community feels they most need to see improvement in educational attainment.
We are in the process of planning community forums in each county to discuss the results and get further input during October and November. We’ll keep you posted on this!
Lessons Learned
Without a doubt, I will never cook a sumptuous meal that meets with the praise (and shock) of my family and friends. But lots of us at MUW have been hard at work in the kitchen doing the prep work on another masterpiece – a framework for moving forward as community leaders in support of greater educational attainment. Watching my husband prepare a wonderful meal has taught me that an ideal result to any creative endeavor takes patience, preparation, and persistence. Even though the thought of applying these traits in a real live kitchen gives me hives, I’m thrilled to be applying them to our emerging plan for helping our community meet its educational goals.
