Our Mission: Through collaboration One Voice for Volusia mobilizes all sectors of the community by strengthening our organized capacity to meet human needs.
Our Vision: Our Community will provide opportunities for youth and families to be self-sufficient and productive contributors to society.
Our Values: We value and encourage connection and collaboration, a culture of care approach, and using data to inform decisions.
One Voice for Volusia is a substance use prevention organization with a historical role of providing neutral community facilitation and project support and leadership. All community, connection, and collaborative-building actions are a vehicle to complete prevention initiatives and activities. Our reputation for facilitation gives us a platform to focus on identified community problems, bridge the connection between risk factors and substance use prevention, and then drive actual results-based work. For this reason, we use a dual approach to prevention.
- We deliver evidence-based programs, create awareness of substances and the impact of substance use on our community, and promote prevention efforts. Our goal is to delay or stop early initiation of youth substance use and prevent the increased likelihood of developing long-term chronic health issues and substance use disorders.
- At the same time, we seek to address the underlying system and infrastructural barriers and challenges (risks) and enhance positive community attributes (protective factors) for Volusia County residents by continuing our community facilitation efforts to build connections and knowledge pathways for community provider collaboration.
One Voice for Volusia contributes to both approaches with various campaigns, systems, activities, and events, and our coalition excels in the ability to facilitate and convene community providers and strengthen knowledge and capacity to serve the community. We inform and elevate work in all sectors.
Our Strategies:
- Host monthly coalition meetings
- Convene groups around specialized topics, including All Abilities and newborn-to-age five, called thrive by five, initiative
- Offer safe storage and disposal training
- Distribute Deterra, a safe disposal tool for unneeded and unused medication
- Build youth capacity and knowledge of resilience and substance use awareness; offer presentations on Red Ribbon Week, youth resilience, substance awareness and prevention, and customized topics
- Provide a platform for the youth voice around preventative efforts
- Focus on youth vaping prevention and enact efforts in support of prevention and cessation
- Communicate community and prevention information through the Community Connector (email distribution tool) and social media (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn)
- Create social norming prevention support campaigns
- Attend community events to provide resources and education on a variety of prevention topics
- Maintain a robust Prevention website that includes content on substance awareness, substance use support, child accident prevention and safety, prevention resources for moms and moms-to-be, community provider tools, vaping prevention, stigma reduction, and youth mentoring and support programs
- Host Contextual Leadership training to create a shared leadership language and empower individuals to relate to others through shared commitments and context
- Distribute Narcan and provide overdose prevention training
- Hold the annual Health & Human Services Summit for community providers to network and learn
- Support the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) and Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) process
- Amplify the work being done by other community providers and entities
- Provide formal representation and leadership on working groups and committees (Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant, Flagler Volusia Grade Level Reading, and Volusia DJJ Council)
Connect with Kristy or Shyla if you are interested in having One Voice for Volusia at your event or need a speaker on various topics. We will work with schedules to confirm availability.
Our Methodology: One Voice for Volusia is using a research, planning, and community mobilization framework designed by Drs. Hawkins and Catalano. This model, based on their risk and protective factor research, involves a process that includes:
- Convening for the purpose of educating and providing networking opportunities among health and human services
- Facilitating impartial and progressive methodologies to positively affect systemic change
- Monitoring community trends affecting quality of life issues
- Encouraging open dialogue about key community issues
- Advocating for the efficient and effective use of community resources
- Fostering diverse partnerships among all sectors of the community
- Mobilizing the community to support measurable outcomes and an effective evaluation of all health and human services programming
- Engaging leaders and citizens by developing and implementing community improvement strategies through priority-setting and consensus building
- Collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and sharing indicator data with the community
- Supporting other coalitions locally and throughout the state to further the field of work