Every three years, the Montgomery County Collaboration Council conducts a Community Needs Assessment (CNA), a responsibility mandated by our role as the Local Management Board for Montgomery County, MD. This assessment helps us understand the changing needs of our community, shape our priorities, and ensure that as the community changes, we are responsive to its emerging and evolving needs.
This time, we approached the CNA differently. We wanted the CNA to reflect the direction our organization is taking to center community and put the power of decision making in community hands. We wanted community voices to be at the heart of this process in a real and meaningful way. We are also committed to an asset-based approach, that starts with the significant resources that do exist within communities and works from there to define challenges and devise solutions. To do all this, we partnered with Everyday Canvassing, a local nonprofit that specializes in community engagement by gathering people’s stories and experiences. We also hired, for the first time, an in-house Community Organizer.
To learn more, download the Executive Summary for the 2023-2024 Community Needs Assessment.
To watch the documentary that evolved out of this CNA, visit Home & Hope in MoCo.
