Cochise Community Leadership Academy
Our leadership academy was developed to seek out leaders within the depths of our community who are recognized leaders or not typically labeled as leaders and build on their strengths to advocate for community change.
The Building Healthy Community team designed this leadership program by selecting pertinent leadership skills from the UACE ACT Leadership curriculum; tailored the curriculum and training with cutting-edge information; provided logistics; and executed an outstanding leadership training that builds upon itself. Topics include Servant Leadership, Discovering Your Leadership Type, Community Engagement, Building Consensus, Communication, Conflict Resolution, Strategic Planning, Equity and Diversity, Empowerment, Delegation Strategies and Public Speaking. The first cohort of leaders created their vision, mission, and goals for the following leadership cohorts.
The training is designed to develop leadership from within communities to focus on emerging needs of the community and ultimately produce Policy Systems and Environmental changes or other significant outcomes. The Academy has graduated leaders who consisted of public service workers, school administration, various citizens with diverse interests and backgrounds. Everyone is welcome to participate.
Cochise Community Leadership Academy has had 5 Cohorts, producing over 60 graduates. These emergent leaders self-selected a project to work on depending on their specific issue or passion.
Many of the projects that our graduates did are still going or still making an impact as they continue to morph and develop to meet the ever-changing needs of the people they are serving. All the graduates are making an impact in their own way in the communities they are in. Some projects have grown and changed, and some are still being developed.
Project Examples
Here are some examples of projects that are still in operation:
Cheyenne MacMasters - Creating a Website to Bring a Local Artist Cooperative Gallery into International Attention
The Vision for this project is to have the artists of a small rural town in Arizona be brought into the world’s conversation on art.
The Mission of entering the world’s conversation on art will be accomplished by creating and sustaining a website that provides monthly features of artists who collaboratively sustain Subway Gallery in Bisbee, Arizona. The website is www.bisbeesubwaygallery.com
This project began in January 2019 when Cheyenne joined Subway Gallery as a member artist. Creating a website that was easily sustainable filled a void in the gallery’s on-line presence. Cheyenne established the website on the WordPress platform, which pulled some traffic from her other websites. The Home page features the show of the month and can be scrolled down to previous shows. Each member artist has their own page with five photographs of their work, a biography, and link to their website. There is a Gallery Members page, a Location and Hours page, and Contact page.
Bob Spahle – Educating the Public on how well a Whole Foods Plant Based Lifestyle can stop and even reverse heart disease and Diabetes
Bob’s project is a nutrition educational program that teaches people the Dean Ornish nutrition program, a lifestyle change program covered by Medicare. Bob gets excited about teaching this because it worked so well for him. He lost 70 lbs., got off 2 medications, and dropped his cholesterol down to 144 (which they say is heart attack proof). During his first 3-week class, he had 10 people who really enjoyed the program. He is teaching classes in multiple areas throughout Cochise County. He also started a Facebook page called Sierra Vista Vegucation.
Joseph Mckearney – Compression Only CPR
Joseph Mckearney is a member of the Fry Fire Department. Not only does he put his life on the line regularly to protect people in our county, he wants more people to be safe! He is determined to make sure that everyone who wants to be trained on Compression Only CPR can do so without worrying about affording the cost of the training. (He is also very concerned about making sure there are enough AEDs available throughout the county, but that is another project.) He applied for and received a grant from the Legacy Foundation to make this goal/project possible (and bigger!) He is collaborating with Rural Fire Departments all across Cochise County to train people in Compression Only CPR. He is also collaborating with the Cochise County School Superintendent’s Office to train student of the new Crossroads Academy in Compression Only CPR. One final note… He has a new partnership starting up with the American Heart Association of Southern Arizona! So excited to see all the good coming out of this!
Some excellent examples of projects that have merged and taken on new live are the following:
Jason Zibart – Connecting a Community to make an Impact
Increasing VICaP Volunteerism by Engaging Service Organizations. This project has been focused on trying to work with local Masonic groups that are present in most southern Arizona towns that VICaP serves. VICaP provides an essential and reliable transportation service to seniors in the community. This service helps seniors age in place at their own homes by helping with a variety of issues. Increasing the number of volunteers means increasing the number of people that can be assisted.
Jason has utilized the knowledge and connections he gained from the Leadership Academy in his new role as the Community Development Specialist for the Benson Hospital. Through this work and the work, he does with Benson Community Resource Council, he has helped push through many projects that are improving the social determinants of health in Benson.
Don Behnke - Prescription Cost Comparison Program
Don discovered through personal experience that prescription medication can become unaffordable for many due to the cost. He was fortunate to stumble upon discounted services that can get those same medications at much lower prices. He realized that this is something many more people need to have. He set out to find as many of these discounted services as he could. He created a spread sheet to calculate the shavings and cost comparisons of multiple services to make it easier to see which choice is best for each individual situation. Then he simply started offering it to whoever trusted him to help. He discovered that the second part was trickier than the first! It takes a lot of work to build relationships and patients are more likely to trust a doctor, pharmacist, medical provider, etc. than a volunteer guy claiming he has the answer to their cost problems.
Catie Armstrong and Angela Rossman - Resilience through Resource Collaboration
Diversity Breeds Abundance… As long as people COMMUNICATE… Diverse people can bridge divides to effectively connect and collaborate. When that happens… ultimately and naturally, they will SHARE RESOURCES.
Catie stated, “Cochise Leadership Academy has empowered me to take steps in efforts working towards community sustainability and resilience. Through the training and support of the program, I am working on a long-term project focused on collaboration. I am connecting people on a local level to meet the needs of our community within the context of our constantly shifting culture, while empowering them in their chosen endeavors. To this end, through application of big picture strategies to various challenges faced by citizens, I’m helping people see commonalities amongst each other. Those commonalities catalyze sustainable relationships that lend themselves to easy resource sharing, to create a resource-flow web and healthy community functioning. This starts with understanding the social determinants of health in our area. Through collective impact, we then collaborate to meet the basic needs of our community members and address health concerns through communication and resource sharing.” Catie continued the project on her own and created an online forum called CoNest. It is one way to show concretely the connections that she strives to build. Check out the website at: https://www.conest.org/
Two groups have been meeting and are working on addressing issues throughout the county. One is Robin Dumas’s project: The Healthy Food Forum. The second is the Youth Leadership Forum which is still in the development stage with many people interested in participating at both the county and state level.
Robin Dumas - Local Food, Schools Stronger, Sustainable County: Cochise County Healthy Food Forum
Robin has a passion for helping others, particularly in eating healthy. She wanted to help people eat healthy while keeping more locally grown food in the local area. She happened to be mentored by Catie Armstrong and learned all about CoNest. She expanded her project by becoming the moderator of the Cochise County Healthy Food Forum which meets monthly to discuss issues impacting the food chain in Cochise County. This has included food suppliers for school districts, Farmers Markets, Food Preservation, Food Harvesting, etc. This meeting is open to the public. It has been held once per month via zoom. This forum has allowed people from many different communities to connect over similar issues and problem solve together. It has also allowed several agencies an additional platform where they can have an audience/reach the public.
Other Projects:
- Increasing Healthy Food Access for Individuals in The Palominas Area
- Creating School-Age Curriculum to Build Cultural Awareness and Self-Esteem
- Creating A Plant-Based Lifestyle/Diet Cookbook
- Improving Local Emergency Response Systems
- Bringing A Youth Recreation Center to A High-Need Area of The Community
- Compression-Only CPR And Increasing Usage of Pulse-Point App
- Resources For Youth Who Are Being Bullied
- Development of Parent Education Curriculum
- Supporting/Fundraising for Willcox Food Distribution Center
- Resource List for Specific Area and/or Subject