Through our Bridges to Prosperity Rockford Region initiative, we have launched a new planning process to boost upward mobility from poverty and reduce racial inequities in our community. This planning process will utilize data from Urban Institute's Boosting Upward Mobility from Poverty and Advancing Equity project to identify key racial and ethnic disparities and barriers to boosting upward mobility from poverty in our community. 

We are launching this process because our community is falling behind on indicators that demonstrate how likely someone in our community is to advance out of poverty.  We plan to use this opportunity to assess systems in our community against the Mobility Metrics and identify weaknesses or gaps.  This project will not duplicate planning already being done by our local government. 

Working with nonprofit, business, philanthropic, anchor institutions, and faith-based leaders in our community, we will publish a Mobility Action Plan that plots a new course forward and addresses the systems and barriers to advancement in our community. 

We also have obtained the full support of Winnebago County Chairman Joe Chiarelli and City of Rockford Mayor Thomas McNamara to create our Mobility Action Plan.  Both have also pledged support, partnership and advocacy in this effort, as well as staff members to serve on the Team and sub-committee.  Additionally, our recommendations will be championed through the appropriate staff members and committees at the City and County level to implementation. 

The focus areas of the Urban Institute framework include: 

 

Working Groups

Working Groups are being created for each of the Focus Areas listed above, and will be led by our sub-committee, which includes: 
Jas Bilich, Winnebago County
Mary Cacioppi, One Body Collaboratives/Bridges to Prosperity Rockford Region
Owen Carter, City of Rockford Health & Human Services
Ron Clewer, Gorman & Company
Michael Jarvis, Winnebago County Health Department
Anqunette Parham, City of Rockford Health & Human Services
James Patterson, Community Foundation of Northern IL
Trisha Tousant, YMCA Rock River Valley. 

To stay updated on our project, join our Bridges to Prosperity Rockford Region Facebook Group, you can find it here: Bridges To Prosperity Rockford Region | Facebook

To learn more about the Upward Mobility Framework created by Urban Institute, click here.

View the full Project Summary here.