Paul Szmal: And we are back on FLX Morning on Finger Lakes News Radio. It's 840 and joining me in studio this morning Gregory Peck from Finger Lakes Community Action. Good morning Greg. How are you this morning sir?
Gregory Peck: Good morning. Thanks for having me here. And appreciate having you as always and your crew is busy getting ready for what's called a Community Needs Assessment. First off, what does that mean?
Paul Szmal: Well what happens is our agency is a Community Action Agency. There's about a thousand of them across the country and it's we get federal funding and our federal funding comes through the Office of Community Services which is part of the Administration of Children and Family Services. So the Community Needs Assessment helps us evaluate, prioritize, strategize, and seeing what the community what the community needs are which is what it is.
So our funding comes from a Community Service Block Grant, not to be confused with the Community Services Community Development Grant. Sometimes people hear the word Block Grant and they think about housing and downtown rehabilitation but ours is a Community Service Block Grant. So every three years our agency does a Community Needs Assessment and the assessment is done in four different ways.
Most people go and do surveys. There's a link at our website where you can go in and click on it and do a survey through that. Second thing that happens is there's actually interviews. So those people that are not able to do a survey for more or less like an elderly person who's not able to manipulate the system if you will, somebody can talk to them one-on-one about what their thoughts are.
Then there's something called focus groups. So focus groups are a group of people that are very like in demographics and so forth. So a few years ago I did it with my foster grandparents so those were all seniors in that group. A few weeks from today I'll be working with Finger Lakes Community College and one of their Human Services Programs where they're college students. Now college students can be any age at this point but that that's what the focus is.
And then finally it's a community forum and that's what I'll be doing in both Geneva and Canandaigua. So that's four ways that we obtain information and then our chief operating officer, once we complete all the surveys, the interviews, the focus groups, and the community forums, she compiles it and helps us again prioritize, strategize, and help us look for what we should be doing in the community.
Gregory Peck: Now who comes up with the actual questions that are part of the community needs assessment? How are those generated?
Paul Szmal: Well they're generated basically we're all doing the same thing across the country. Things are maybe tweaked here and there to help the questions. We pride ourselves in not having a you know a long questionnaire it's basically five six questions with that and but the the responses can obviously be different depending where you where you where the Community Action Agency is.
Gregory Peck: Now we should at this point since we mentioned the fact that there is going to be I guess we would consider this community forum portion that there are two events planned one for Geneva and one for Canandaigua.
Paul Szmal: Right so they're both an hour along they're both on a Tuesday so in Geneva it's April Fool's Day so I'll be at the Geneva Public Library from 6 to 7 p.m. We're hoping to have 15 to 20 people participate and then a week later on the 8th we'll be at the Wood Library in Canandaigua. I'll be conducting community forum there from 6 to 7 p.m.
So again we are trying to we need to get feedback from the community of what they want not what we think is a good ideal of the agency but and it's sort of a free-for-all everybody just sort of puts out whatever they want and and everything's a go and then we sort of calculate at the end of it what three things are the most important to that specific group.
Gregory Peck: Do you wind up sharing with other community action organizations around the country?
Paul Szmal: Not only other community action agencies but the community at large because what comes out of it can be helpful not only for our agencies but for government entities for private sector for different different things like our board of directors is required to have we have three divisions if you will we have somebody who serves on economically disadvantaged the private sector in the public sector so when we get the results we can share with our board members and then share with the community and anybody who participates will share the results with them.
Gregory Peck: Does this have an effect on the funding and some of the grant money that's available for different programs throughout the year?
Paul Szmal: Oh absolutely absolutely so then so what we can do then is based on the results we can apply for different grants and we make sure that our community our block grant is going to the right thing so in our agency we basically have three sort of divisions of things we have programs that are crisis a good program with that is our homeless shelter out in SOTUS and a food pantry those are people in crisis they need help right away our feet are right on the ground there.
Then we have what is called at risk programs one of our programs we have is ACE it's advocacy for community and empowerment and we have a lot of parenting programs through there that people participate in sometimes are required to sometimes they're not it's it can be for anyone and then we just sort of have a stable more stable people that are living well but we still help them to our foster grandparents for instance they're more isolated and we're just helping them be part of the community having them being engaged in decreased data isolation so again this community needs assessment really helps us figure out what needs to be done in the community.
Gregory Peck: We're with Gregory Peck from Finger Lakes Community Action and we're talking about the community assessment that is being done can you give us an example of like what a couple of the questions are that are a part of this?
Paul Szmal: Yeah what we're looking for basically so one of the first questions what are the challenges that are currently facing our community so again whatever depending on who you're talking to in different places that for instance downstate they may get some something about green space we need more green space downstate that's not really a problem with us up here with our lakes and so forth so again each Community Action Agency has different things so that's what we're looking for.
Then we look for what service gaps in our in our counties can we identify whether it be food deserts, transportation issues, medical disparities, that kind of thing so those are you know two of the questions that with that and then we try to get a little bit specific talking about unemployment, transportation, adult literacy, school-age child care, youth and young adults and senior citizens so we do try to focus help the group focus a little bit on that as well.
Gregory Peck: So this really winds up being kind of a report card or a State of the Union if you will.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. And then you're able to tailor the programs and the different services that you offer based on the data that comes in from this.
Gregory Peck: Absolutely and then we're trying to make sure that they're aligned with our mission statement and our vision statement so our mission statement is coordinating resources to empower and inspire people in need to help them reach their full potential so each Community Action Agency has a mission statement and then on along of that is our vision statement which is WNCAP is a highly effective, passionate, and innovative resource to help people engage with its Board of Directors. So it's trying to keep everybody we're not just doing programs for the sake of doing programs we're doing programs to meet the needs of the community and that's where people can help us out.
Paul Szmal: And again the community forums there are two of them that are coming up where you're looking for looking for people and these can be people from any walks of life.
Gregory Peck: Yep so I don't know what's coming in the door for that so they can be family, single people, seniors, people with children, it can be anyone with that so they're all welcome to go and then again if they can't go to a community forum they can go on our website and there will be a survey for them to fill out.
Paul Szmal: Okay well let's give out those dates and times one more time for the community forums.
Gregory Peck: Okay so in Geneva it will be Tuesday April 1st April Fool's Day from 6 to 7 o'clock we'll have some refreshments being served we're looking for 15 to 20 people to participate in that one and then a week later we'll be at the Wood Library in Canandaigua again same time 6 to 7 o'clock. So again they're actually in those cities but if you're from Phelps, Clifton Springs, Naples what have you you certainly welcomed and we encourage you to attend to get your to get your voice heard. And again if you can attend there is that option on the website to be able to fill out the questionnaire if you will it's only about five or six questions.
Paul Szmal: That's right yep very well. And the website address?
Gregory Peck: So our website is Finger Lakes Community Action.org and that's what our DBA is that's what we do business as our name is Wayne County Action Program but again we service all different communities at this point and their footprint is much larger. So again the website for the survey is Finger Lakes Community Action.org.
Paul Szmal: All right Greg thanks so much for stopping in and filling us in this morning we appreciate it.
Gregory Peck: Thank you I appreciate it as well. All right it is 850 on FLX Morning.
