Red Oak Community Heart & Soul gets input on projects

Red Oak Community Heart and Soul held an event on July 9.
A community action workshop was held at the FiveOne8 to prioritize action ideas gathered in the community. Samantha Williams is the coordinator of the organization, and said the ideas have been gathered for a lengthy period of time.
“We’ve been going out to industries in the Red Oak City Limits here, about 20 of them. We did identify a group that we were trying to reach. We had what we called treat days and we brought snacks and stuff and information. They would fill out a survey so we could get the responses that we need. We had more than 600 people respond to our survey back in 2023, around the last quarter of that year was when we had that survey going,” Williams said. “After that, we went out and did our one-on-one interviews with community members where we got about 100 interviews for more detailed information.”
All told, Williams said they had 1,200 statements and from the 1,200 statements, they identified 783 action ideas, which were then pared down to the top five in each category during the July 9 event. The six themes were public safety, schools, community roots, government, entertainment, recreation, and economic development. Williams said when they launched Heart and Soul, they identified the demographics for the area that the group is focusing on, which is the Red Oak School District.
“Once we identified the demographics, we had to figure out what organizations or individuals worked with those demographics. We are making sure that we are covering the community as a whole. We’re trying to make sure that we are connecting and working with the people of this community. We’re not leaving anybody out. The group that we had at the workshop was a part of that.”
Williams said they also started a list of nonprofits in the area and had a Community Connect Expo back in February.
“We identified more than 60 nonprofits in the area. We’re up to over 70 now. We had half of them show up and attend our Community Connect Expo. We did invite quite a few of them to the event on July 9,” stated Williams.
All told, there were more than 60 people that showed up at the event to help narrow down the action items.
“It was what I was expecting. It was great to see everybody show up and go through that workshop last night,” advised Williams.
Williams outlined the next steps for the group now that the action items have been narrowed down.
“The next step is to review each group’s set of data to see where we prioritized everything. We’re going to get a more detailed breakdown of that, but we’ll also be reaching out to the organizations that were assigned each of those action ideas to see if they would be able to make that commitment and kind of follow through to make sure that action idea is completed. We’ll start with the top five from each of those meetings there to focus on first,” Williams explained. “Right now we’re in phase three, which is three out of four phases. We’re hoping to have this phase completed by the end of this month and then moving on into getting that community action plan done. We’re hoping to have that done by the end of fall.”
Learn more about the organization at roheartsoul.org.