The CAPP Community Process: From ‘Someone Should’ to ‘It’s Happening!’ in Windham
Over the past year, the Southern VT Economy Project (SVEP) has worked with several communities via our Community Assessment and Project Prioritization (CAPP) program. This program helps towns take all the ‘someone shoulds’ swirling around their community, set priorities, then move forward projects that best accomplish community goals. A resulting report, prepared by SVEP staff as part of the process, contains starting steps and connections to resources that can help community groups take action on their projects.
We were pleased to hear from the Town of Windham, a 2023 CAPP participant, that the CAPP process had helped them receive funding from the AARP to make improvements to the kitchen in their Meeting House so they could host community gatherings around food this winter.
Windham’s CAPP process focused specifically on their historic Meeting House. In addition to being a focal point of this hill-top community, the Meeting House involves many community stakeholders (Selectboard, Town Committee on the Meeting House, Friends of the Meeting House, Energy Committee, Planning Commission, Library, Windham Community Organization, and Emergency Management).
An important outcome of the CAPP process was helping to create a space for finding new community uses for the building without making programming the responsibility of the existing Meeting House committees – who are already responsible for maintaining the physical building. A suggestion from the CAPP report was to “publicize the opportunity for community groups to take on programming, in order to explore expanded uses and find community ‘cheerleaders’ for various expanded uses of the MH.”
This suggestion resulted in a ‘Brunch and Brainstorm’ event in September 2023, facilitated by SVEP Program manager Meg Staloff. Thirty members of the community participated, answering four questions designed to tease out ideas, and more importantly, see if any community members might step up to take charge of programming. By the end of the brunch, sticky pads were adorned with colorful Post-it notes containing nearly 150 ideas, many overlapping. Sifting through all the ideas, several groups of issues emerged. One of them was cooking, baking, and all things food – elevating the need to seek funding to update the kitchen equipment in the Meeting House.
Using the desire generated by the Brunch and Brainstorm to see action (one of the stickies said “No more meetings, we want action!”), local volunteer Cathy Fales saw an opportunity to apply for funding from AARP for a Winter Placemaking grant that would allow the town to make some of the kitchen improvements and set up a series of culinary events over the winter.
We were thrilled to hear that Windham was successful in their application for this grant and look forward to seeing the rollout of their Winterstable program this winter. For Windham community members, the grant award shows a direct link from gathering people’s ideas to moving ahead with implementation – a small win that will invite future participation. It also demonstrates strategic community planning in action: having a list of identified goals and community priorities in hand is half the battle when quick turnaround funding opportunities pop up!
If you feel like your Southern Vermont community could benefit from the CAPP process, reach out to SVEP program Manager Meg Staloff at mstaloff@brattleborodevelopment.com
About the Southern Vermont Economy Project (SVEP)
The Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation’s Southern Vermont Economy Project provides training and technical assistance to increase local capacity, skills, and resources in order to advance local projects critical to Southern Vermont achieving community, economic, and workforce development goals. SVEP is funded through the USDA Rural Community Development Initiative. For more information please visit: https://brattleborodevelopment.com/svep/
