By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Ensuring housing for the homeless and reviving athletic programs for students and adults alike were chosen as top priorities at the Sitka Health Summit’s virtual meeting on Thursday.
After hours of discussion, the group of more than 40 participants narrowed more than 100 ideas down to the two, meeting facilitator Doug Osborne, a member of the Sitka Health Coalition, said.
The chosen goals, he said, will provide measurable benefits for the community as a whole.
“What would it be like if your youngster had a really cool enrichment program to go to and enjoy... and it’s healthy and good and you’re getting a little break as a parent... Imagine on our next really cold, rainy, wind night, what it would be like to go to sleep at night knowing that every one of your neighbors had shelter,” he said.
Health Summit goals are designed to be simultaneously ambitious and practical, he noted.
“We want goals that have those three qualities: being beneficial two, being ambitious, and three, being doable. And so they did a great job, they came up with two stellar goals,” he said.
Other goals that were in contention for the top spots included a program to treat adults with substance addictions and another to revamp local recycling and solid waste processes.
The project to end homelessness in Sitka is a longstanding goal of the Sitka Homeless Coalition, which is proposing construction of a dozen dry cabins at the end of Jarvis Street for that purpose. “Dry” is an Alaska term for dwellings with no inside plumbing.
Osborne said that the project is viable, provided that Sitkans support it.
“We can see success in sight if we get enough people to assist, and support, and encourage, and I think we can realize that goal that’s been years and years and years in the making,” Osborne said.
The other goal of the health summit calls for the revival of the popular Community Schools program that the School Board discontinued because of budget cuts.
“Bring something back that is sustainable... (and) revive a sustainable Community Schools program for youth and adults,” he said.
Osborne sees a particular benefit in having the program running during the pandemic.
“COVID has been so isolating for people, and let’s see if we can reconnect and support young people and get some healthy non-screen activities,” he said.
Both of the selected projects will receive $2,000 in seed funding and some facilitation assistance from the Health Coalition.
Last week’s virtual meeting was the first Sitka Health Summit since 2018, when the concept of founding the Cloud youth center was selected as a community goal. Within a year, the Cloud was up and running.
Osborne noted that for these initiatives to succeed, they need “mass infusions of people.”
“This needs people power, it’s going to need people power. It’s not like there is somebody else, ‘Oh, they’ve got it.’ They don’t got it. We need you,” Osborne said.
The chosen projects will be kicked off at meetings on Oct. 13. At 5:30 p.m. Mt. Edgecumbe High School residential principal Andrew Friske will hold a meeting to discuss the future of Community Schools. The meeting location hasn’t yet been decided. At 7 p.m. Gayle Young of the Sitka Homeless Coalition will host a virtual meeting on Zoom to discuss the proposed homeless shelter cabin project.
Friske can be contacted at andrewf@mehs.us, and Young can be reached at sitkahc@gmail.com.
