Community Collaboratives
The Community Collaborative Initiative creates pathways to raise the standard of living and quality of life for everyone who lives in Springfield and the surrounding area. It brings together and mobilizes diverse interests and identifies and prioritizes community needs and resources.
For questions about any of the Collaboratives listed below, including meeting times, email collaboratives@cpozarks.org.
Council of Collaboratives
The Council of Collaboratives is comprised of leadership of each Collaborative and works to provide paths for cross-collaboration over a broad range of community issues. The Collaboratives had 241 separate organizations engaged and volunteers gave 3,008 hours of their time this year.
Child Abuse and Neglect Collaborative
The Child Abuse & Neglect (CAN) Collaborative is working to prevent, intervene, and heal families impacted by child abuse and neglect. Currently, there are approximately 650 children in foster care in Greene County.
Early Care Collaborative
The Early Care & Education Collaborative advocates to identify, prioritize, and develop strategies to address the quality, affordability, and availability of early care and education.
Bringing together a network of child advocates—such as childcare providers, early childhood educators, employers, community organizations, families, policymakers, funders, and more—the Collaborative focuses on addressing the most pressing early care and education needs in our community.
Environmental Sustainability Collaborative
The Environmental Collaborative and its subcommittee, the Ozarks Clean Air Alliance, raise community awareness and encourage practices and values that support a healthy natural environment.
Food Collaborative
The Food Collaborative seeks to take the community to where we have a healthy, local food system and has continued to support food security and other food system-related projects.
Have Faith Initiative
The Have Faith Initiative brings together faith leaders from Springfield and Greene County to discuss and work together on matters of faith within our community.
For more information, visit https://havefaithinitiative.org.
Health Equity Collaborative
The mission of the Health Equity Collaborative is to advance health equity in the greater Springfield community by supporting and equipping staff and community partners to identify and work to reduce health disparities in our community.
Housing Collaborative
Working from a newly created Strategic Plan, Housing Collaboratives will focus on Blighted Properties, Policy and Advocacy, Landlord Tenant Education, and Housing Equity through the HOME Team. Although increasing safe, decent, affordable, and accessible housing is what drives this collaboration, their priority projects include supporting a City rental inspection process, Legislative panels and education, expanding Social Serve (affordable housing locator), and increasing Universal Design into new construction.
Let’s Go Smart: Transportation Collaborative
Let’s Go Smart: Transportation Collaborative is a community partnership designed to encourage the people of Springfield, Missouri to make wiser transportation choices. Whether it’s walking, biking, riding the bus, driving, using Uber/Lyft, or any other way of getting around, “going smart” means thinking ahead and deciding which option will make the most of our resources, health, environment, and quality of life.