COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- Columbus Air Force Base hosted its second Air Force Community Partnership meeting on Wednesday at the Columbus Club.
Over 70 base and community members attended this meeting to share their new ideas of how to create better partnerships between the base and the local Columbus community.
The meeting was hosted by Lt. Col. Timorah Beales, Partnership Broker from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, and Lt. Col. Nathan Miller, 14th Flying Training Wing Community Partnership Director and 14th Mission Support Group Deputy Commander.
The meeting focused on multiple objectives surrounding potential community partners, existing agreements, challenges and opportunities of potential partnerships. The 4-hour workshop allowed community members to brainstorm and facilitate ideas in hopes of creating a better understanding of the community’s needs and wants.
“Good partnerships accomplish more for each organization’s mission than they could on their own,” said Beales.
The workshop was broken into four groups with specific focus areas: Work, Play, Live and Learn. Each group included community members and Team BLAZE members whose jobs and organizations fall under those categories. The groups spent 90 minutes discussing ideas and writing out plans for future partnerships and then shared with all the groups in the Club.
The entire group then got back together to present their ideas. Each group had a spokesperson who presented their top 10 recommendations to the group.
“There really isn’t any other program in the Air Force that is purely about working with the partners outside of the gates to help solve our problems,” said Beales. “There is no hidden agenda, no minimum number of partnerships, and no dollar goal. Every commander and community is going to be different, and we just provide the framework and tools to create beneficial partnerships.”
The Air Force Community Partnership Program, one of the 13 Make Every Dollar Count initiatives launched by the Air Force, offers opportunities for military installations and local communities to partner and achieve mutual value and benefit. It is a framework through which installation and community leaders are developing creative ways to leverage their capabilities and resources to focus on achieving reduced costs by finding a shared value.
“I want to thank our community partners for the time they invested in today’s brainstorming sessions” said Col. Doug Gosney, 14th Flying Training Wing Commander. “This program is going to do great things for our base and our community.”