Kentucky’s Ohio County Together We Care has gone through some ups and downs in the ten years since it started – but you wouldn’t know it if you took a snapshot look at the initiative. In 2002 it was awarded a Jostens Our Town Award for being a youth-friendly community. The initiative had six paid staff members and enough funds to take on almost any project they wanted. But a couple of years ago they lost a key advocate when the superintendent of schools, a strong asset supporter, left, and last year they narrowly missed qualifying for a Drug-Free Communities grant that had been a staple for the past five years. The school district asked the initiative to move to a smaller space and they had limited funds to pay the smaller, two-person staff. Despite these struggles, the initiative continues to be a strong presence in the community. “Sometimes change just happens and you have to deal with it,” is how coordinator and director Sheila Barnard sees it. And this is what Ohio County Together We Care (TWC) has done. In the process, they have found out that sometimes change is not all bad.
It was September 2007 when the Drug-Free Communities funding ceased. “We were housed in part of an old school building and it was sometimes hard for people to find our office,” said Sheila. When the Drug-Free money ran out, “we were asked to move to a smaller space.” People were moved around, lines of communication became tangled and, for a while, the organization was unsure of where they would go next. “It started to look a little like we might be forced to take on a smaller role and be less active in the community.”
But the tide turned soon after they were asked to change locations. They were approached by the president of the TWC board and her husband, both members of the business community interested in architecture and old buildings. A few years earlier the town had constructed a new post office and the old one was left sitting empty on Main Street. “She said she would hate to see an old building like that just sit there and go to waste. So they bought it and donated it to TWC, and now for the first time we’re in our own place. We have our own newly renovated office and meeting space with new carpet and new floors. Being right on Main Street makes us easy to find and gives us great visibility.”
The initiative was also truly embraced by the community, which is fully supportive of the work that is done by Together We Care. “In the past we had a lot of funding for everything, so we had to ask for almost nothing.” But now that the initiative is going through funding changes, community members have come forward to help. In-kind donations and volunteers seem to show up just when they are needed. Monetary donations are still needed, but the staff and board members are working on fundraising. “The Ohio County Firefighters Association brought in a boardroom table and chairs that they no longer needed. We’ve had a lot of that kind of community support. Now that we have needs, we’ve really been embraced.” 
Much of this can be attributed to the fact that Together We Care is so well-recognized in the community. According to a random phone survey conducted by Together We Care in 2000-2001 approximately 65% of Ohio County residents had heard of Together We Care and 11% were in some way involved with building developmental assets. “We have a lot of community buy-in,” says Barnard, to which contributes to the success of Together We Care.
When asked what she thinks has led to the success of the initiative over the last ten years, Barnard had this to say: “A lot of times people get bogged down with the negative in the community, so it’s really good to look at the positive,” she said. “When you receive something good, like the Jostens Our Town award or the America’s Promise-100 Best Communities Award, it’s really a shot in the arm. It lets you know that there are good things going on, and that’s great for motivation.” But above all she stressed the importance of staying tough in the face of adversity and change, two things that are nearly unavoidable in the unpredictable world of youth and community involvement. “A lot of times when you walk through the fire and you get to the other side, things are better; you are stronger.”
Sheila Barnard is the director of Ohio County Together We Care and can be reached by phone at 270-274-7787 or by email at sheilabarnard@bellsouth.net
back to February 2008 Asset Champion
back to initiative