Innovative Community Solutions Group

This is a multi-talented resource team with a collective history of more than 150 years of experience in a variety of fields, including private industry, workforce development, education, governmental services, human resources, and human services. Resumes, individual references and credentials are available upon request.The team members have extensive backgrounds in both organizational and independent efforts at problem-solving and systems-building in arenas that require the dynamic intersect of organizational commitment and human capital.They bring their varied backgrounds together to form a synergy of expertise that is difficult to duplicate.

OVERCOMERS RETREAT 2007

ICS recently organized and conducted a youth camp for 16 young adults who are aging out of foster care, kin care, or friend care life situations. They gathered in Kentwood Louisiana on July 27-29, 2007 and gave the above name to their weekend event. There were eight females and eight males. These young people have not only had to struggle with the early loss of significant family ties in their lives, but also endured the Katrina disaster or the horrendous tornado that tore through Arkansas last year and just about leveled their town.

Our local partner for the camp was The Quad Community Action Agency in Hammond, LA. The young adults are participants from The Quad, Phoenix Youth & Family Services in SE Arkansas and youth from the New Orleans public school system. Staff support was provided by Promise For A Better Tomorrow and Passport to Success. These programs are funded through grants from the U.S. Department of Labor.

The youth that particiated in the Overcomers Retreat have been invited to present at Casey Family Program's It's My Life Conference in Atlanta, GA at the end of September.
We are trying to raise funds for registration, transportation, T-shirts and spending money for these youth to attend this annual youth leadership conference. If you are able to assist these youth, please send your donation to Conrad Curric, Managing Partner, ICS Group, 4024 Livingstone Pl, Durham NC 27707. Thank you on behalf of these outstanding youth.

Varying issues and conditions were the impetus for the formation of a team of this quality and capacity. The most compelling were:

1. The recognition of a curious, but rarely identified similarity around the challenges to creating and maintaining individual and organization excellence in both private and public sector companies. As observed by one of our private sector team members, “the interaction of people in the workplace is a common dynamic in all aspects of business, whether it is a Fortune 500 company, or a small governmental, faith-based or community organization”.

2.Distress over the continual squandering of human potential within our society as a whole, and a particular concern for the vulnerability of youth and the destruction of far too many of them prior to an age of personal accountability.

3. A changing social environment requiring fresh eyes and new approaches to old and sustained problems, inclusive of, but not limited to, racism, class, and sexism.

We are focused on providing people, especially young people, with the skills and techniques to access the opportunity structures that our nation is continually building.

We are a group of professionals who elected to personally share and integrate our individual ideas into a collective and dynamic platform for organizing and delivering training and technical assistance to a variety of businesses, programs and projects.These ideas include developing a capacity to impact thinking about youth and to demonstrate alternative approaches for serving them, as well as to provide alternative choices for the youth themselves.The ICS team recognizes that youth problems within our society are not contained within any specific group or groups.Our vision for change includes viewing work as a median for all youth and developing systems and opportunity streams that lead youth to work and to the personal validation and self-realizations that meaningful productive work provides.With dual interests in research and service delivery, the group envisions producing a laboratory that utilizes “state of the art” practices for youth development; seeks to discover and refine new strategies and practices; and routinely informs the field in dynamic ways that create and sustain positive change.We embrace the here and now reality of abandoned and throw-away youth and seek to respond to immediate need by incorporating the youth laboratory with a plan of relief for currently struggling young people.We view their needs and our efforts as symbiotic and believe that these youth, who are at high risk for negative life experiences, can be engaged in the creation of a dynamic living experience that can also build and expand the service capacity of youth providers.We envision bringing the time-honored private-sector concept of networking to the community level. We intend to connect with individual practitioners as well as vulnerable communities and floundering service efforts.By providing services to youth while engaging in the training of youth practitioners, and using our research and analytical skills to identify and codify the dynamics of the processes at all levels, the ICS team is uniquely positioned for the development of research and the on-going demonstration of creative best practices.

Our training and technical assistance efforts focus upon, but are not limited to:

(1) building and maintaining individual and organizational skills for operating successful programs utilizing results management techniques; (2) developing capacity and sophistication for the technology and use of information systems; (3) creating total community access through mapping and creative recruitment strategies that continually widen the circle of inclusion; (4) collaboration and non-duplication of effort; (5) the clustering of front-line, mid-and upper-management personnel for high performance through self-directed work teams; and (6) the incorporation of 21^st Century work skills in practice and training. Our vision embraces entire communities inclusive of the 0-3 population and older adults.We focus on youth development in a preventive mindset, recognizing their vulnerability, the wider society’s need for them and the recognition that both the youth and the wider society are in need of attention.

ICS, Inc. can be reached through:

Conrad C. Currin,
Managing Partner
4024 Livingstone Place
Durham, North Carolina27707
(919)593-0283
conrad@leaptoicsonline.com

Anne Adams, MSW
Managing Partner
(919)621.3552
anne@leaptoicsonline.com

Sundra Franklin
Managing Partner
(917)974.8025
sundra@leaptoicsonline.com

Michael Anthony Rice
Managing Partner
(336)324-7980
mike@leaptoicsonline.com