Field Trip 4 MIT 11.945 Springfield Studio, Fall 2005

thank you uh good afternoon my name is Shen banagi I'm one of the nine students part of this class group that has worked on a series of Economic Development proposals for the North End before we begin I just wanted to introduce my colleague Annis who is from mit's open courseware open course Weare is a great resource that MIT developed a few years ago to take some of the ideas are generated in our classes and make them available to the world through the worldwide web it's a great way this particular class has been able to assist other similar communities across the US and so I just want to let you know the filming is taking place right now if anyone would like not to be a part of the film could they let us know preferably now and we'll make sure not to capture you um as a part of the record of this meeting we have some bags right alternatively but but if anybody has any other concerns or questions please feel free to ask either me or Alice about that um so I guess the first thing I wanted to say is thank you really for coming out this afternoon I'm glad the impending snowstorm did not come very early and it's just wonderful to see all of you here many of us have been in conversation for a long time time now over these last three months and I just wanted to say that on behalf of all the students we have really enjoyed and got a lot out of this process working with the community and talking to the leaders and representatives of a very variety of agencies and private sector firms not just in the North End in Springfield but really in the region as at the level of the state so thank you and thank you for sharing your sense of dedication and concern for this particular Community it's been inspirational for us as um a bunch of second year students who in about 6 months time will graduate and go into the real world of community Economic Development um there are a few things on the agenda for today that I want to um make you aware of we want to very quickly lay out some of the findings that we came in uh came across very early in our research process for this project particularly through interviews and meetings with stakeholders in the community and in Springfield and we want to move from there to our recommendations and spend some time talking about how we think Economic Development initiatives can be implemented in this particular Community given the resources and some of the constraints that we all are very familiar with uh what we want to end this meeting with though is a real sense of agreement uh amongst ourselves on how to to move forward we have a list of suggested action items that we think the campus committee could address some of them even as early as your next meeting in January and uh what I hope we will be able to do by the end of our meeting today is talk about that and decide if those steps are indeed reasonable or not I just also want to let you know that we've left copies of a feedback form um in front of all the seats of this table if anyone doesn't have a do let us know we'll get you a copy it will be very useful for you to share some of your reactions and Reflections to what we present um and if you could just jop them down as you hear things or as you have questions and then if you could hand them to us by the end of the day uh that would be very useful by the end of the presentation do not have to feel obliged to identify yourself or your agency however uh just one request to my colleagues each of them when they come up here introduce themselves and at the end of this presentation when we sort of talk about the action items and clarify any of the questions or comments that you have if you could do the same introduce yourself and tell us where you're from so again my name is shiban banagi I'm one of the nine students and the first thing I wanted to do was to ask Alice to uh talk about you're doing Anna's doing it is um uh sorry ask Anna Anna Bley to come up into this sorry okay we've only been together for a year and a half my name is Anna and I will my I just want to take a few minutes to talk about uh how we came to this place where we are today okay uh our work this semester has fits into the broader 2003 strategic plan I um that you had uh and you see the four targeting goals that you laid out were lifelong learning Economic Development which brings us here health and safety our mission this semester our work was to develop an economic development plan for the North End and we were asked to include two very specific requirements uh one was to use a population based approach this is the type of approach That Neon is very successful use in the north vent and the second requirement we had for this plan given to us was to include concrete actionable steps which this group can appreciate uh and we appreciate the the necessity of those types of steps because that is what mov process forward so we've tried to do that given this task this Mission we began to amass research uh and gather different types of information one of the types of information we've done is is quantitative information gathering and Analysis which have included employment Labor Market analyses Commercial market analyses and property surveys we have also as many of you in the room been subjected to uh over 40 interviews with stakeholders and interested party representatives from the city from local Regional agencies that deal with business Economic Development Workforce issues we've also talked with schools and Bay State in addition these individual or small group interviews we've also had four focused groups with the help of neon staff and Community residents where we've talked about business issues we've talked about unemployment issues and again thanks to the TI's efforts of neon we've been able to collect over 100 responses from North End Community members uh regarding different employment and business issues survey so we had this large in amount of information those of you that were with us in November your campus committee meeting remember we came to you with some initial findings with some recommendations and the three sort of common uh streams of Economic Development F you see here business development Workforce in real estate we were proposing that we pursue a two track economic development plan addressing Workforce and real estate as a result of our meeting in November this group discussions both there immediately afterward you asked us to continue with our Workforce Development work but instead to pursue Business Development is our second track of that plan and that is precisely what we've done I'm John I know my own name I think uh how long have you been together involv that information at the present time we'd like to segue now into how we really build a coherent strategy um towards the goal of Economic Development the economic development for the North End specifically around Workforce and Business Development so the question is what programmatic activities are required in the community towards again greater goal of economic development that is CommunityWide first looking at Workforce Development uh employer involvement in training curriculums and this is happening in some places but really across all areas really I mean it's a very sensible thing need employers involved in veloping the curricula to train people who are going to work towards those positions second uh is the integration of skills and Workforce training now in this sense uh vertical and horizontal integration which sorry is a bit Jing uh vertical means really taking one person one participant through the different levels of training whereas horizontal means connecting across skills so ESL is tied to job placement but again these things are interconnected and not really and not disperate um as in some cases they often are and third is an adult Outreach capacity uh as we're sitting in a school right now there for youth there is this built-in mechanism with which is school to do some Outreach or through which to do Outreach for adults that's a bit more of a challenge uh and I think that's a real programmatic activity that needs that needs to happen in the North End i' like to read a quote um as you'll see our our friendly Springfield Workforce training professional represented by a circle in a triangle um we we as we said we talked to so many people um and we pulled out a couple qust that we think are real emblematic of um of of people's senses of of economic development in the community and this one is uh there are too many providers all with all with their own funding not talking to each other and there isn't enough government money to cover the local needs what what this shows is that c technical assistance work for development services existence neighborhood the question is really how to connect them how to connect them to each other and how to connect them to potential potential participants in business development again what are what are the kind of the programmatic needs for again CommunityWide Economic Development first is North End specific business opportunities and these are opportunities for both existing businesses and potential businesses talk to a lot um a lot of really aspiring kind of entrepreneurs in the community as well as existing entrepreneurs uh and I'll say their their growth is stunted but there are obstacles to their development Focus North End Business Outreach uh this means businesses talking to one another and service providers for businesses talking to their constituents and again this goes both ways it means business owners going upwards to to assistance providers and assistance providers going down to level of business owners and again just creating this interconnectedness there is mainst Street business cooperation uh a lot of people in this room have talked about really the desire to create on Main Street a real commercial thriving Corridor and lots of things go into go into a program like that and I think number one is creating greater cooperation among the businesses that are there I think that's pretty self-evident and finally is community control of of property uh again something that that many people in this room have expressed as a major concern how does how does the community how do people who are really matter in the community get involed involved in planning and development um how do you take control of the physical assets of the community um and that's something that is really critical it's a long-term Economic Development uh and again this was somewhat periphery to our mission but we tried to address it somewhat especially in kind of long-term vision for how you can begin to think about that and a second quote from conveniently an aspiring Northend entrepreneur and though the symbol is the same this is not the same person as the other quote just to be clear um I don't know how things work here I don't know how how to start a business I don't know anything if there was an assistance person at neon I would even pay for this kind of assistance so again the idea that there is there is desire out there there are people who are looking to start businesses there are people looking to expand their current businesses and they all just just don't necessarily know how to go about that so to meet these programmatic needs which we just identified in the community for economic development how do we go about doing that I think this is really uh a Crux of a lot of what we're recommending and that is we need a core staff devoted to economic development in the North End specifically that are working on these issues I think again just to re the key is that they're dedicated there's we found a lot of people as a lot of people in this room a lot of people outside this room are working on issues either around Economic Development or critical to Economic Development they're not coordinated and they're not housed um they're they're they're not interconnected in a matter that really gets to some of the root of what are the issues in the North End uh they might be Springfield wide they might be Regional uh they might be looking at just Workforce Development or just some issues for business but there isn't this interconnectedness that is again sorry to repeat myself to solely focus on economic development for the North End um and also critically that is that that there is not this core staff that is responsive to the needs of the community as we all know you know things on the ground change constantly and without this professional staff that is constantly their mission is solely Economic Development there is it's just impossible I mean people have too many other things going on in their everyday lives uh in their Workforce lives to to be attuned to the changing realities on the ground um and to really be responsive to what EIC development needs of the community are uh just to kind of flush out what this means a little bit again planning across organizations so this is really leveraging resources to bridge uh creating Bridges across organizations and as we all know in our work I mean we're all sitting here people from different organizations by working together you really do leverage your uh your resources and your capacities uh and Resident uh resident Outreach um I think we're going to set going to talk a bit more about kind of the models that that we see to to ACH achieve these ends but it's really looking at a person Byers case management not just um we're going to do some Workforce training with them but segueing that into maybe business development but really taking people vertically through a hierarchy and staying with them in case management approach uh and with that we'll turn over to Seth who's going to discuss more how we're going thinking about flushing out these capacities in a more thanks thanks John uh my name is Seth Pipkin in this group of course and uh so as John just explained these uh programmatic needs and the consequent institutional needs to execute on these programs I'm going to get more into the specifics of what we're saying when we talk about institutional capacity first of all what I want to say is that when we were thinking about the subject of institutional capacity in the North End we realized there are two great examples that are very applicable to the issue of economic development that can be brought to bear more on that topic that is the campus committee itself and neon now what we have in the campus committee is actually a pretty extraordinary Confluence of groups because they are such different types they're in different sectors and they're on different scales we have local Grassroots social service agencies at the same table as large local corporations government agencies emplo uh Economic Development commissions and they're all speaking together and they're all working towards coherence on ideas about this community so the result that we have here is a productive collaborative dialogue secondly neon is also important to highlight how that's the product of collaboration in the gr we have five organizations coming together to form one Outreach group to serve all of their missions not only that it does TH so through an Innovative strategy that has been proven to have very important effects having the rate of uninsured residents in the area so what we have are two primary lessons from these groups one of collaboration bringing greater results than individual efforts and the other being a case-based approach producing significant results in a community that in other context is considered isolated so what we want to do in terms of talking about these institutional capacities is apply these lessons to an Institutional Arrangement that we're proposing to you so we can move along this is our basic overview map of this institutional what we're saying is that there needs to be a John dedicated Core Staffing to this topic where are professionals with training in Economic Development and their job task is to think about economic development in North andw they in a sense will be operationalizing the mission of the Kanas commit and carrying out the vision of this group giving that in return there's there's this implementation of what's talked about here what's brought about in this very diverse dialogue to carry out those plans they're going to work with employers and service providers as well as neon the reason we break out neon is that we're saying for every activity that this staff carries out there's going to be an Outreach component whether that's Workforce Development or Business Development or some other theme that the organization takes on in the future so so in terms of neon part of this staff's initial Mission we're recommending is to fulfill the original goal of neon to be a staff of at least 10 that can really undertake a full on casebase approach throughout the neighborhood and in return what we have is this feedback that is so crucial to the implementation of economic development in this area information from the people on the ground who are the beneficiaries of this and that's integrated into the planning process and brought to bear with Partners who come to the table give support to a North End wide agenda donate their time their thought their effort to collaborating and in turn receive information resources from this staff that's both in the form of human and Financial Resources through the planning of things now so this is sort of a static representation of the institutional relationship on the next slide this is an outline of how these relationships work over time to accomplish the goals that you've asked us to suggest how to accomplish it starts with convening the service providers that's a first step to bring everyone together with the goal of saying what's needed here where are you short on funds where are you unable to find out where your beneficiaries are or what's unclear to you about their needs or um what are perplexities of increasing success rates of your program those identified needs will be brought to be on the Outreach efforts of an expanded meal so this organization will go out into the community and ask the questions necessary to solve some of these riddles or hopefully solve some of these riddles that exist within the confines of the service agency walls to go to the households of these people and ask where are their gaps this will have a dual result of increasing participation and also getting information on reasons for nonparticipation which is important because that gives the information necessary to create an adaptation of the programs to meet the North End specific needs the needs of this community that are specific to its space its population and its history that's going to come from the Outreach and that's going to help service providers adapt their programs to better results so we'll have increased participation and adapted curriculum that is owned by the North after that's accomplished you can carry out an impact evaluation put into numbers what are the differences now that you've harmonized all these different efforts and brought in the citizen feedback on how the programs are designed you can start to say how many more people are working how many more people are starting businesses what are the numbers on this and that is the basis for producing a case to have a greater aggregate amount of resources coming to the community than was here before that can lead to a fundraising strategy with private foundations that ultimately as I said increases the total resources and before I move on I want to mention that something that's important to our recommendations is that we think there should be an explicit relationship between this professional staff and local corporate Community benefits boards because this is economic development and local companies corporations are necessary to collaborate on this and these Community benefits programs are directly pertinent and in fact their whole goal is to get this kind of feedback that the system is being so Prov so this is in case I didn't make it clear um and I also wanted to check uh I sort of laid out a lot of steps here a lot of relationships so I just if if you all can nod or shake your heads if this all seems coherent in if I can move on or if I should step back a little and review how this all adds up can you clarify who the service providers you're referencing are yes um well I'll give examples and this can be applied to other thematic areas but within the Workforce Development area area you have training agencies some of them are members of the campus committee such as the grey house so organizations like that would come to the table and say these are where people are coming in maybe we don't know certain things about where they're moving on to we don't have the City to track that we want to know that and talk to other service providers but also there will be gaps that will be filled by some service providers at the table but what we're also saying is some information that everyone wants will not be held by anyone at the table and that's when community outreach be utilized so these service providers are the actual agencies providing services to the beneficiaries social service programs is that more is that what you were talking about or you mentioned the Social Service organizations and economic development Workforce Development organizations yeah that would shift I I think my classmates are agree with me on this that would shift from initiative to initiative so this Economic Development staff is going to according to its capacity you know work on a theme such as Workforce Development and business development and others so when you talk say Workforce Development it will bring trainers to the table as well as broadb Social Service organizations in so far as they have efforts that apply to Workforce Development so we're saying this should be the mission of these efforts um I don't think I need to uh read it out loud for you um so this you know stands for itself and we're saying that this is sort of the concretizing statement that's a summation of all of these that we recommending so what does this mean in terms of the structure of the organization itself we're saying that the best mechanism to carry out these goals is an organization it is a 501c3 nonprofit organization we have a tentative title of Wente the bridge because this is a bridging effort across Social Service Agency efforts in the North End we're saying that this organization has its own board of directors it has an executive director and a program manager the executive director of course is accountable to the vision and overarching efforts of the group and the program manager assists the executive director in this this is not the long-term Staffing structure of the organization what we're saying instead is that this organization should be started with this stff structure it should answer directly to the northern campus committee as in some way as an Advisory Board uh it depends on the specifics or the kind of you really want to set up for this and it'll have horizontal relationships with other social service agencies and with neon which we gave uh special presence on this slide because as I said previously we believe that every Economic Development effort that's undertaken by this should involve Outreach so neon is for all intents purposes always in there but a separate distinct organization what are the resource needs of this group we're saying this 501c3 will have a startup phase of 5 years and at the beginning we'll have staff salaries and overhead means of $120 $180,000 range for the two staff now this staff their their seed funding will come from whatever Community corporate Community benefits programs can be solicited for assistance in this and in those 5 years the initial two staff will be working on ramping up the program to get the support necessary through private Foundation grants to expand the staff and to fulfill the long-term goals of this organization and for the time being we recommend that it be located on the campus so what we have here is an outline of the institution its relationship to other institutions and what's going to come next is we're going to have the remainder of the presentation be outlining specific programs that start to become feasible when you have an institution like this specific IDE and suggestions we have for how this can be applied to meeting the goals set out by the cus Comm so is is your are you saying that this organization is solely an economic development Oran is this just solely an economic development or is this brother well it depends on your I mean I guess we should say it's solely Economic Development contingent upon how broad a definition of economic development except and maybe maybe in further elaboration on that should come into discussion at the end because some of the programs will help you see what we're talking about the bread and there were two staff you said like a like an an executive type person and then a program director program director and you're going to tell us about the programs yes that's what's okay got it okay um there are just uh a couple of things I wanted to iterate from se's presentation uh the organization would be its own Standalone 501c3 we looked at a variety of organizational models we thought that given the broad objectives laid out in some of the programmatic IES that I'm going to just talk about in a second the best implementation vehicle would be an independent entity that very much like the campus committee would not be exclusively identified with one particular agency but would have the broad support of the entire Community as well as corporations that are headquartered in Springfield and Regional Economic Development agencies that exist either of in western Mass or some of the new by state entities like SP Planning Commission um just to flush out some of the things as we start getting into the programmatic areas that Jeff uh you brought up headed by an executive director whose responsibility obviously is to give leadership and shape to that organization and assisted by a program manager who will actually be the one running uh not individual service oriented programs but I think assisting and collaborating with some of the employers and training providers and say the area of Workforce Development as an example and creating uh the material necessary to document the impact of these programs as a way of raising more funds one of the issues that we kept confronting as we interviewed um professionals and and service providers in Springfield as a whole and it's really a no-brainers that where resource constraint and obviously one of the ways of resolving that is to document the impact of a particular program and so the program manager would really assist with that and I would differentiate that role a little bit from the executive director who for example we're recommending would sit on the B State Medical Center's Community benefits advisory Council every hospital within the B State Health System has a community benefits advisory Council and files a community benefit report as a part of the public record every year and we think that it would be an excellent achievement for this community to have an experienced Economic Development professional on that board giving voice for the community on that board and being able to shape some of the ways in which this excellent and buring partnership between the community and B State can uh provide additional jobs and additional uh opportunities for growth and and and Vibrance in the community so I just want to lay out um what the areas for um for for program review and collaboration led by this new agency the bridge organization Rec calling ated uh will cover in the register of Business Development um it will be to try and create a pushard program as well as a technical assistance Hub and perhaps over a longer Horizon begin to address the question of Land Development and property control particular with an eye towards commercial properties and or income earning properties in General on the workforce side it's about producing um more well defined ESL programs that serve the particular needs of this community rather than just look at the Puerto Rican Community as an aggregate for the entire region or the state or even at the Springfield level sort of addressing some of the particular difficulties That Neon for example has well documented that are specific to this uh neighborhood um provide training for people to get Healthcare sector jobs and uh assist some of the excellent initiatives that have already taken foot in this community around school to work transition and Youth Development um we've thought of some of the ways in which each of these prongs will play themselves out and how that program manager led by an exec director will give shape to it and I just wanted to ask Ana and then am to talk about this time I actually know what I'm saying uh ask haa and Amy to talk about that in some detail my name is Han I'm going to talk about the three components of the business development program that we have the first component is a push card program this is low risk low cost a retail program that we want to offer to informal businesses to start their businesses as well as formal bus business and store store fronts to expand their businesses what we're thinking about is U starting this by having probably the organization that we're we're suggesting being being the lead organization to Le push cards to the to these informal businesses and starts and we're going through mainly um two phases of this pushard program the first phase is the the more stabilizing one we're suggesting having in of the in the camp in front of the campus and having non food items depending on what businesses can can offer and what are the need of u h some some Target population like based residents uh we suggest that we start with non food items like flowers jewelry handicrafts and then once we're stabilized we can expand we can expand by going more to food uh food items and this needs more for logistical complications because of the pring process but also we can expect to the Bas Supply location in North Ministry so what does the push card offer us it's mainly it it's it eliminates a barrier for informal businesses to start and also it it allows the formal businesses to expand and to reach larger audience as important it gives life to the streate of ministry Ministry it it's just evidence tangible evidence very quick tangible evidence that there is a life and for Outsiders as well as for the community members themselves that there there's hope that things can be going on pretty in one manner the other um thing that we're talking about is technical assistant help and what we found through interviews and focusing groups that there are a human resources with technical assistance provide um that could that are available for for businesses and there is a human dist in demand for for these resources however we found that many informal businesses and businesses are not aware of the existence and availability of these resources so how can we make the connection between these two and what we're suggesting in is having technical assistance Hub where a parttime staff member can not we we're not looking for providing technical assistance to business we're looking to providing information and referral to businesses where to go and how to go and how and also how to organize between these technical assistance agencies just for for littleit networking so this definitely eliminates a barrier to enter the market and or to do better in the market for for all businesses the third program that we're thinking about is a property control and development need to say Ministry specifically it has serious problems sub standards uh properties as well as V Properties and this mean insecurity at least in perception and this is serious problem that many property many business owners suffer from so what we need as say that we need to revise the zoning what what this community needs now what what are the demands and what what's available so also need Al reasoning rethinking based on the community current Community needs this is very long vision and it's beyond the scope of our mandate our work to to H go into reg study about this however we suggest two things the first is exploring the opportunity of having MIT class next year to do this Rous study about about the real estate and the thing second thing is forming campus committee working group for for property control and this uh working group can H decide who should take the lead in property control should it be the organization that we're suggesting to to create or should it be any other institution H either existing or new or new institution and I cannot emphasize enough that this uh whoever takes the lead uh should should should um organize well to take benefit of the numerous uh and resources available to improve substandard housing and properties on the national state and state and Inter and sorry federal state as well privately and publicly available there's need to approve the townscapes there might be chances to use the historic buildings in the Main Street and of course there's definite need for resoning and rethinking all use this will eliminate the barriers for many bus owners to ENT the market but it will also provide uh to the business owners current business owners stability in their businesses I'm going to talk about our proposed strategies for dealing with Workforce Development um and the first one is dealing with um English as you know the language barrier is a major challenge to people to getting North End residents to be participating in the workforce and also aing training programs so to address this like to in the short term focus on using the resources that already exist at the campus to focus on ESL classes for particular groups of people for example men also working people who already have a job to kind of get them to the next run of the ESL and the training ladder and also very basic English it's very vocationally focused from the start so separating people that for example want to learn English to be able to help their kids with their homework from people who are really learning English starting in the beginning that want to eventually go into um Workforce training and into jobs and in the medium term we want to build on the incredible success That Neon has had in case-based management in the healthcare realm and bring that into language learning so that each language learner would have a case manager who would help them through the ESL process from ESL through Workforce Development training through job and up through a couple bring as the job lb realizing that the ESL and language learning process is not something that can happen like in one course or even in two or three courses but it's it's a process going to take several years to get people up to where they can really participate bu in in the job market and through all of this um neon can be can be developing a lot of data and a lot of input that can inform form a comprehensive strategy that this new organization can Implement towards eliminating literacy and and dealing with these barriers to barriers to English language learning in the North End and also this data would provide um a really strong argument they could use to leverage to get more resources from funders in the future secondly we'd of course like to focus on Healthcare careers Healthcare is a growing sector not just a Bas state but also in the regional and the state and the national economy and jobs in the healthc care industry pay a living wage they're rewarding they help serve the community and they do have a recognized job ladder of increasing responsibility and increasing wages in order to and there also a lot of a lot of existing training programs at um at STI ncdi all kinds of all kinds of training providers um in Springfield already but a lot of them recruit mainly through um through schools through programs focusing on people that are coming out of high school so we'd like to do two things to kind of better the connections between um these existing training organizations and the North End residents first of all um the campus could look at recruiting the recruiters for these organizations that usually go to the different high schools and try to get them focused in on the adult Market of people that could be working in those jobs through the campus and also again talking about the casebase approach which would be people through ESL hopefully through Workforce Development programs from their ready and then up into the job ladder and then thirdly um of course um investment in Youth and education is kind of the most fundamental form of Economic Development and there are also already a lot of um there are already a lot of initiatives on the table from neon and new North about putting together mentorship programs for middle school students and also internship programs for high school students um for Youth Development and to and to bring them you know kind of into the workforce and kind of exploring different possibilities and we'd like to kind of you know build on energy that's already there by suggesting some some programmatic ways that that that that program can come about for example just looking at different Innovative strategies that similar program similar Community to the North End has use involving technology and ways to get kids involved and kids excited and then also kind of just give some strategies for dealing with large corporations and funders and just kind of organizationally setting those programs up and then also connecting those internships and those jobs to to more fully to the regional economy and to jobs that those those students would want to pursue after they graduate so um so now take back to to then and we'll talk about how to how to implement and steps for all this this is what you really came for right um well I I I just wanted to say there's sort of three things that have come up I think recurrently through this presentation and that have really sort of driven us as we've um thought about how to uh prepare an economic development plan for this community one is the importance of Outreach and having having doorto door contact with individual residents and households in this community I can't even begin to express how impressed we have all been by the work that neon has done in these years and we think that is an excellent model for taking on not just the ways in which this community has been plagued by health problems but then also addressing economic and income uh disparities that that residents in this neighborhood are are really victims of I think the second thing that has driven asses and again this comes out of our perception and understanding of neon is that every time agencies in this city and specifically even in this neighborhood have collaborated the benefits of the community have been tremendous the reduction of the uninsured rate for example what has been begun to happen around incarceration transition these are National models and these are things that the community should hold their head up proud and and be proud of and and and the the third thing really is that this engagement as a class has been very useful not just to nine of us but I think for years now for the MIT students who have come through this program and we thought that it was very important to build some kind of continuity rather than just have us come in for a few weeks suggest a few things and then leave take up a lot of your time and then probably leave you hanging with very little and so what we wanted to make sure was that we were going to leave you this time with an implementation for heo that would build continuity based on some of the recommendations we've made today but then also between classes offered by MIT and perhaps even other institutions that the campus and Community collaborate with in the future um this was of course the idea of el quente and to make it happen I I have to confess I come out of a architecture and construction management background this sort of was the the most intuitive way for me to express how to uh set deadlines for um those of us who want to see this come together uh I don't want to go down each individual line I just want to bring your attention to a few things that I hope we'll get to talk about during the Q&A that's going to come up in like one minute the most important thing obviously is to get professional legal counsel um we have within the nine of us and then also drawing from Cesar call and James some experience and exposure with how nonprofit organizations are organized and how they are Incorporated and how they of comply with tax requirements we're not experts and we recognize that and we urge you to by the time you meet in January have interviewed and decided upon a law firm that can provide some kind of pro bono Council on this issue and help you get to the point where you need to be where you actually have a stand low in 550 1c3 there are other things that come out of that again the first few campus committee meetings in the new year I think to spend time drafting up the statutes the bylaws the Articles of Incorporation that will govern aente deciding what the accountability structure is what the reporting procedures are I are very important and I think that there are a lot of different directions that can take obviously again the advantage of having started with the discussion with the lawyer is you can get get professional advice you can have framework for that that's legally sound and that gives shape to the way in which you think this organization can be most responsive and responsible to the community um and then finally I hope that at the very latest by the middle of next year um having gone through the process of drafting up uh the Articles of Incorporation this organization will be ready to file for its Federal tax exemption that process in itself quite lengthy it can take anywhere between 3 to 6 months and it produces something of a constraint on how to recruit staff particularly those first two positions that we hope we funded uh through some seed money for Community benefits programs um I would say that there's some flexibility though here one of the options that we've considered it's not really choked up on this bar chart but some of the options that we've considered would be to actually have like a fiscal conduit or fiduciary something similar to the tites foundation if any of you are familiar with that organization that actually provides a number of support services including uh uh a tax exempt status to a fledgling organization helps with payroll helps with guiding staty compliance and again I think a professional Council on this matter will be much more useful than we can we can really only direct you to the question that we know need to be answered so U the option of of going through something like the ties Foundation is that you can actually have your executive staff brought on board earlier than the say fall of 2006 and with that begin the fundraising plan and the program development plan much earlier but if that doesn't seem like a viable alternative I think that what we find is that by the uh summer of uh 07 we can meet and sort of enjoy a good feta right here and say wow we've come a long way we now have a COR professional staff that's going to address uh some of the most important issues that this community has been grappling with for a long time so uh that's it uh I just wanted to say I just wanted to say that we are really really very grateful to all of you and particularly to Neon I'm so sorry that the staff is not here with us they were not just our client group they were colleagues and friends and they took us into their homes and they gave us plan and gave us plan and that's an ongoing joke most of it at my expense but it's it's been a tremendously warm reception for all of us and we're very grateful for that and uh we're quite an nor so I just want to open up for questions and some time to reflect on the things we've talked about and hopefully clarify some of the recommendations I want to thank you folks for coming to us for participating with us and for bringing up a million questions that we uh maybe had thought about and put away maybe hadn't even thought about and and stirred up a lot of the stuff that U we needed stirred up and now it seems to me that what we have to do is U look at what you said and uner it in other words organize it and put it into action and for this we thank you very much much um I think I think the I think the heart of everything you've brought to us um has to do with uh the first part and that is getting started on a new um on a new way of doing doing business and that is uh having some type of organizing principles around that we can start building on so that there's energy and vitality and action that keeps on going um I and and from my experience with all of us the question of of of 501c3 uh is a critical question I don't think that actually if we brought together all of the important people that we had to bring together we would know that that's what we wanted to do and I think that that is really the next discussion there are there are probably other ways and as a matter of fact the question of legal uh legal help um would be very beneficial or or some other kind of help that could help figure out what are the possibilities of bringing this together how do we take all the people who have a stake in this and who want to participate in this and who want to make it go forward and figure out the very best way for us in particular to move ahead and it may be a 501c3 it may not be um and I'd like to know what actually all the options are and uh how we could organize ourselves to take the next step but the next step is really getting getting someone who who's basically their sole responsibility is to move this work forward um we even have people in our community who we have people in our community who are doing this and if we can figure out how to make it all a coordinated effort um then I think that we're really um ready to jump off into the next phase of this so I I want to thank you so much for all of the questions and all the things that you've raised with us have have stimulated all kinds of thoughts and energy and activity you know so we're very grateful thank you I just wanted to say um for the convenience of open course and some of us who have not had the chance to meet you be very nice if you could introduce yourself me agency affiliated with closely and also just to reiterate that this is not the end of our engagement even as a class we are finalizing a formal report that describes a lot of what we talked about in much greater detail and lays the case about why this particular arrangement for example with a little more evidence that we were able to present given time constraints today um so especially since we have held back on finalizing that so we heard from you I think it's very important to get as many reactions out on the table and also at the end of that as Peter began the meeting by saying to really get a sense of what the next step for this group is because I think if there's some consensus and commitment to that today uh we would like to be able to brandish that on the first page of the report so it's there to remind you of all ours of the day and night