Champaign County Standing Tall

Oscar Smith, Publisher/ HIP Champaign May 27, 2021

In the midst of a very emotionally charged atmosphere in Champaign, Illinois, HIP Champaign has provided a Community wide Open Forum. We can make a difference as we create a refreshingly calm yet bold call to positive community action. Champaign has the spotlight moving forward and we must return to mutual respect. It's time we come together for real change.

 We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:8). 

Pastor Charles F. Stanley one of my Spiritual Fathers. Along with Nelson "Madiba" Mandela.

As resilient community leaders we must learn to trust God, no matter the circumstance. Whether it is life’s daily grind or getting broadsided by a significant crisis.

HIP Champaign is proud to partner with our local Champaign County Communities to apply a holistic resilience framework to our Open Forum. We want to share lessons and strategies that can help us be connected as one community in advance of events like the recent police shootings here in Champaign. After forty years of local community advocacy I know proactive community collaboration works. The proposed Champaign County Collective Leadership must work on community preparedness in an Open Forum.

Disasters can occur in various forms with durations ranging from mere hours to days, weeks, or even months of prolonged damages and losses. HIP Champaign Open Forum is an approach we're undertaking as a media outlet to help build the needed resiliency in our Champaign County Communities. A local community with a good disaster preparedness and local leadership engagement will be more capable of responding to, and managing disaster risks, which in turn will reduce damages and losses caused by disasters.

Respectfully.