By: Aimee Robertson-Fant—
Muncie, IN—All Muncie residents are invited to attend Muncie Action Plan’s Annual Public Report to the Community- Wednesday, January 10th– 5:30pm at the Minnetrista Cultural Center.
Come learn what each of MAP’s 5 task forces have been doing to help support Muncie’s assets and address community needs in 2017, how to plug into the new projects and events housed within each of MAP’s five task forces, and how you can provide YOUR input as MAP develops a brand new action plan for the city (MAP3).
What is Muncie Action Plan (MAP)?
Muncie Action Plan (MAP) is a grassroots community-driven strategic plan for the citizens of Muncie by the citizens of Muncie. It houses 5 distinct task forces and 47 action steps with components of health, education, civic engagement/civil discourse, city planning/infrastructure, land, neighborhood and property development/redevelopment. MAP has been generously supported by the Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County and the Ball Brothers Foundation, has a working, volunteer Board of Directors and Co-Chairs and works with the City of Muncie, health, educational, development, cultural and non-profit institutions to help implement the community-chosen Plan’s agenda items. The first iteration of MAP materialized in 2010 from Muncie residents’ will to draft a community plan of action and was borne from a community-wide desire for unity and civil discourse, in the face of public, political discord. As many of these action items were fulfilled and another series of community input sessions were conducted, a second Plan was formed in 2013.
MAP is now poised to move into its third planning process and will begin gathering data and community input from all corners of Muncie, as areas of continuing progress and new challenges have been identified to form a third plan; MAP3.
2017, a Transformational Year for MAP
As a result of the many new community partnerships and multi-organizational collaborations which have been cultivated this past year, Muncie Action Plan has had the opportunity to further develop a strong relationship with Ball State University through Building Better Neighborhoods, the Office of Community Engagement, and several undergraduate and graduate-level Immersive Learning programs from the Urban Planning, Center for Information and Communications Studies, and the Office of Entrepreneurial Learning departments.
In 2017, Muncie Action Plan has collaborated with Building Better Neighborhoods and Shafer Leadership Academy to host the annual Muncie Neighborhoods’ IDEA Conference, the “For the Love of Cities” awareness event held at Cornerstone Center for the Arts, featuring best-selling author Peter Kageyama, helped host year-round technology, leadership and skills-advancement workshops, served as a community partner for the Facing Project’s “Facing Addiction”, helped support efforts to materialize the first of its kind to our community-“Muncie Bridge Dinner” and partnered with Ball State’s Bowen Center for Public Affairs to launch “Candidates of the Future”, a quickly-filled class in which grassroots leaders gained access to ballot-access State party leaders, experts and knowledge surrounding how to run for and hold local political office.
Early learning leader non-profit, BY5 (housed within MAP Task Force 1) has continued to expanding its relationship with the United Way of Delaware County to reach to more young learners and families in its quest to build and sustain new programs to increase literacy, access to social services and to directly address poverty.
To learn more, attend MAP’s Public Report to the Community, Wednesday, January 10th, 5:30pm and visit: www.muncieactionplan.net
Follow MAP
www.muncieactionplan.org
