Central Missouri Community Action (CMCA) wants to have a heart-to-heart with Callaway County.
In what officials hope will help the group better take care of Callaway's needs, CMCA is hosting a Community Conversation forum to discuss poverty-issues with individuals and groups, 3-5 p.m. Feb. 26 in the Callaway Electric Cooperative's Community Room.
What we'd like to do is identify areas of poverty-related issues that are a cause or issue in the county," CMCA Community Organizer Tad Dobyns said. "Secondly, we want to find out and identify the resources that are in place for that, and then thirdly, see how CMCA could help address those needs if there isn't anything addressing it at the time, and what steps need to be taken to start addressing it."
Dobyns said that this was the first time CMCA had held such a forum in Callaway or Audrain counties since he became the community organizer in those areas about two years ago.Alongside CMCA Community Services Director Angela Hirsch, Dobyns will coordinate the open forum that hopes to raise awareness and create discourse on poverty.
The Community Conversation will help complete CMCA's community needs assessment it conducted at the end of 2013 to help identify needs locally.
"Poverty is out there and has a lot of different faces," Dobyns said. "There's a lot of resources in place in Callaway County, and these kind of days we don't want to duplicate services if it can be avoided, or if there's a need to duplicate services, we want to partner with them and do it right."