Pillsbury United Communities is a unique nonprofit organization. With multiple locations in Minneapolis' inner city neighborhoods – including four neighborhood centers and a professional live theatre – Pillsbury United Communities is positioned to address the complicated issues and concerns faced by the 35,000 people who walk through our doors each year. The agency’s 200 full and part-time staff often live in the neighborhoods where they work and are passionate about helping their community and its members grow and solve the challenges they face.
Waite House has provided community building activities, youth and service programs to the ever-changing Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis since 1969. With over 4,200 residents passing through our doorway in 2010 and a projected increase of community participants in 2011, our programs and services have reached capacity in our current space. It’s time for our space to finally grow with us!
Waite House has taken a leadership role in crafting a cooperative arrangement with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board and five other community organizations to share the costs of operating the Phillips Community Center, and making it our new home for our neighborhood center.
Waite House has been a foundation of support for thousands of our community residents over the years and many community members have helped us raise over 80 percent of our goal of $250,000. On Friday, October 28, 2011, 8 Phillips Community Members dedicated their time and talent and prepped over 400 tamales in Waite House’s kitchen. This grass-roots fundraiser brought in over $900 to help make Phillips Community our new home.
Waite House still needs the support of the community to help us renovate our new space, we still need $50,000 to reach our goal. The money you contribute today ensures that the Phillips Community Center is fully renovated and equipped to become the new home of Waite House.
Be a part of our New Roots with your tax-deductible contribution.
Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation. A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy. Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with high employee involvement, strong internal communication, and an acceptance of a healthy level of risk-taking in order to achieve new levels of innovation.
Ninety-two percent of American’s took action for social change this past year, according to the Social Change Impact Report from Walden University. The report was created as a kind of barometer for who is engaged in social change, what issues matter to them and how they’re working together. S…
It is hard to place a value on our volunteers, the thousands of unsung heroes who help our community thrive. Volunteers are an integral part of Pillsbury United Communities. In fact, in 2010, over 1,600 volunteers donated approximately 24,000 hours of their valuable time and energy to the Agency. In recent months, hundreds of volunteers passed through our doors ready to make a difference:
On April 30, 2011, 100 Comcast employees volunteered at two of our neighborhood centers: Brian Coyle Community Center and Waite House. Volunteers painted the gym, office, bathrooms, and storage area at the Brian Coyle Community Center located in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. In addition to painting, volunteers reorganized the food shelf, scrubbed the building walls, weeded and mulched flower beds and planted vegetation alongside the building. Volunteers at Waite House painted walls throughout the center, replaced ceiling tiles and performed spring cleanup and landscaping around the building.
A handful of volunteers took on the tough task of scrubbing graffiti off of the walls at Brian Coyle on May 16. The volunteers spent hours removing graffiti from the building, repainting exterior walls and then closed the day with a soccer game with the kids.
On June 14, 50+ Target volunteers filed into Pillsbury House Theatre. The volunteers painted the building’s exterior walls in preparation for a new mural and cleaned and organized the kitchen and basement. The volunteers made a lasting impression with all the work they accomplished in only one afternoon.
The dedication of PUC’s numerous volunteers allows us to serve over 40,000 individuals each year and create choice, change and connection in our communities. To all of our volunteers past and present, thank you. To learn more about our current volunteer opportunities, click here to view our Opportunity Directory.
Pillsbury House Early Education Center Working Towards Closing the Achievement Gap
Governor Dayton recently announced the expansion of the Parent Aware childcare rating system. Parent Aware rates early childhood institutional quality on a one to four star level to encourage informed choices by parents, and to encourage institutions to improve the quality of care. In his statement, Dayton says, “Minnesota’s future success depends upon building an education system that gives every child the chance to succeed.” The statewide expansion is an affirmation of Minnesota’s commitment to close the achievement gap.
A recent kindergarten readiness study conducted by the Minnesota Department of Education found that only 50 percent of Minnesota children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn. One of Pillsbury United Communities’ focus areas that intentionally targets kindergarten readiness is: Innovations in Early Childhood Development.
The Pillsbury House Early Education Center (PEEC) is dedicated to providing children with the skills, knowledge, behaviors and accomplishments they need to enter grade school ready to learn. PEEC ensures children are prepared for kindergarten by delivering high quality, multicultural education and childcare and educating parents about childhood development and milestones.
Pillsbury United Communities’ Early Education Center is achieving and demonstrating results. After an extensive application and approval process, PEEC recently received a Parent Aware rating of 3 out of 4 stars. Furthermore, seven children recently graduated from the PEEC, and Minneapolis public school teachers consistently comment on how prepared our young people are for kindergarten.
Research has shown that investing in our children’s early years pays off in both direct and indirect ways: through improved graduation rates, school success and life-long outcomes, as well as lower adverse societal and economic costs. The community as a whole has a stake in the quality of education for every child, and PUC and the PEEC are committed to working collaboratively across sectors to close the achievement gap.
Child Poverty In Minnesota Has Increase by 56% Since 2000
Every year the Annie E. Casey Foundation publishes the KIDS COUNT Data Book. While Minnesota ranks second for the fourth year in a row in key indicators of child health and well-being, child poverty in Minnesota has increased 56 percent since 2000 compared to 18 percent nationwide.
Research makes clear the high price we pay if we fail to act in the best interests of the next generation. Even before the economic recession, child and youth poverty cost an estimated $500 billion a year in reduced economic output, higher health expenditures and increased criminal justice expenses. This trend is extremely alarming, and one that has tremendous implications for the future of Minnesota. Children living in poverty face all kinds of risks that affect their health, academic achievement and overall quality of life, which ultimately impacts the well-being of our state. This is an issue that impacts us all.
Pillsbury United Communities’ approach to long-term poverty reduction begins with building relationships with children and families and identifying what poverty is for them and the best way(s) to address their situation. PUC’s approach is individualized, integrated, asset-based and sustained over time. Each of PUC’s four community centers and its Urban Institute for Service and Learning has developed extensive partnerships and collaborations that benefit participants and leverages community resources. PUC’s work starts with offering basic needs services including food shelves, clothing closets, emergency financial assistance and access to culturally relevant health care. Once day-to-day needs are met, participants focus on longer term change through a host of innovative, life-changing programs that include a variety of youth, family, educational, community organizing, cultural arts, employment, training and economic development initiatives.
Pillsbury United Communities Neighborhood Centers are innovative and proactive in their approach to creating stronger communities. While each center is distinctive—based upon the demographic makeup and unique needs of the surrounding neighborhoods-each has developed programs that address six common focus areas:
Innovations in Early Childhood Development
Innovations in Youth and Teen Development
Innovations in Adult Education and Skill Development
Innovations in Civic Engagement and Leadership Training
Innovations in Essential Resources
Innovations in Wellness
Since PUC is a multiservice agency, it is able to provide many of the services that people want and need to move out of poverty, connect with their communities and use their collective voice to inform, educate or create change.
Click here to join PUC in its work to end child poverty in Minneapolis; however you are able—as a volunteer, partner or donor. The future we build will be stronger because of your investment.
In a book on servant leadership, James Kouzes and Barry Posner write that “Leaders we admire do not place themselves at the center; they place others there. They do not seek the attention of people; they give it to others. They do not focus on satisfying their own aims and desires; they look for ways to respond to the needs and interests of their constituents.”
They must of been thinking of Tony Wagner when they wrote that. Tony has been a friend, a mentor, and a confidant to me, and I have had the incredible privilege and opportunity to watch him work. I’ve been amazed watching him defuse conflict with just the right story for the situation. As many of you know, Tony is a master storyteller, yet I believe he uses storytelling as a tool to make those around him feel at ease or to share his wisdom with his staff. His stories have made me laugh, given me pause to reflect, inspired me, and made me know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would be the man to call if I ever wind up on a game show and need a lifeline. Most of all, though, I witnessed how Tony earned credibility and respect with everyone he came into contact with, because he has such high integrity and the courage to do what’s right, not just what’s convenient or popular. He holds himself and everyone else accountable for solid results. He’s committed to what he does here, and people believe him and get behind him. Helping to create the MACC Commonwealth, for example, was not something that many leaders would be comfortable with—to open yourself up to scrutiny, to open your books up to other organizations that other leaders might consider competitors—but Tony was confident it was the right thing to do for the agency, that it would allow us to recommit to our mission and to focus our resources on working with community members to address and solve community problems, and he helped make it happen. One thing I especially like and appreciate about Tony is that he has a unique way of helping people find their own voice, their own way of becoming leaders within PUC. He allows for opportunities to innovate—the Urban Institute we created is just one example—and I myself have benefited as a result. I hope I can honor him by continuing to lead this organization with as much integrity, commitment, accountability, and creativity as Tony. Tony, even though I know you well enough to know that all this attention makes you uncomfortable, that you always try to give the attention to other people, I do hope that you can see and acknowledge the many gifts and opportunities that you have given to so many people, myself included. Thank you, Tony.
Pohlad Family Foundation Sends 72 of our Youth to Camp
PUC extends a heartfelt thank you to the Pohlad Family Foundation for their $16,000 grant for summer camp scholarships. The grant paved the way for 72 urban core youth to have a residential (overnight) camping experience, 60% of them for the first time. Learn more about the Pohlad Family Foundation »
“If You Dare” follows a group of children and the adult artists who mentor them in a theater program for at-risk kids. The stories of the children of the Chicago Avenue Project offer a view from inside of the highs and lows, struggles and triumphs involved in a small theater company’s efforts to make a difference in the lives of children facing challenges of inner city life.
TABLE FOR TWO features 10 short plays written by professional playwrights, directed by professionals and acted by some of Twin Cities top theatre artists in partnership with neighborhood kids.
ABOUT THE CHICAGO AVENUE PROJECT: Since 1996, the Chicago Avenue Project brings together the Twin Cities best adult playwrights, actors, and directors who volunteer to work one-on-one with neighborhood youth on the creation and production of an original play. Individual children develop close mentoring relationships with at least four adults who are successful in their creative fields while adult professional artists share the chance to perform in wildly imaginative plays as talking guinea pigs, horses, computer gaming systems, and other indescribably unique characters.
The Chicago Avenue Project gives every child—no matter their circumstances—the opportunity to discover that he or she has a lot of value to offer. (The project is not about teaching youth to perform, though they do learn acting—nor is it about teaching them how to write plays, though they learn that as well.)
![92% of Americans Take Action for Social Good [INFOGRAPHIC]](http://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/125,360socialchange.jpg)
