Thanks for a great Fall Gathering!

Thanks to all of you who attended our virtual gathering last month on November 15th! Sorry that it's taken a bit to follow up and share the slides and the notes from the great conversations we had that evening.

You can download slides in PowerPoint form here (it's a 35MB file and may take a moment to open) and PDF form here.

We used the evening to quickly recap the history of the Oxford County Wellness Collaborative and talk about how regional collaboration and our work have changed over the past 10 years. We then moved into small groups to invite our guests to share their thoughts in response to a couple of questions:

• What is the possibility for your community that personally excites and inspires you and has the potential to transform the county?

• What are some of the steps we can take to address the root causes standing in the way of achieving our vision?

We came back together as a large group for the "harvest," where the ideas and themes that came up in the small groups were shared. The sharing is captured in notes that live here.

What's next? The ideas that we talked about will be taken back to the OCWC Steering Committee. That group will carefully consider how the Collaborative can respond to the need that was named, and will help craft a set of recommendations that we’ll share in the spring at another gathering. This will be another chance to make sure that we heard you correctly, and have a sound plan in mind to address what we’ve learned. We're hoping that we can safely gather in person in the spring.

In the meantime, you're welcome to be in touch if you have thoughts that you want to add to the mix. Please reach out to Brendan Schauffler with any questions at brendan.schauffler@mainehealth.org, or (207) 744-6191.

During our conversation a fantastic film from Smooth Feather Youth, produced by young people from the Sacopee Valley, was mentioned. It's called As We Are and you can find it on the Smooth Feather website.

In closing, here's a quote about gratitude that we included in the care packages sent to all of our attendees.