Catalyzing Community Transformation in Bastrop County

Update (2024):

Building the capacity of organizations to engage community members in decision making and leadership to foster healthier communities is a key objective in our 2024-2030 Strategic Plan, Pathways to Health Equity.

In doing so, we seek to equip communities to achieve their health priorities through community-driven change. Since 2019, the Foundation – in partnership with the community – has made strides through continued investment in Network Weaving. The Central Texas Health and Wellbeing Network began with 32 residents trained as network weavers. As of August 2023, more than one hundred residents have been trained to develop leadership skills and recognize and own their power. The network has had more than 1,800 individuals engaged in projects, events, and community-building activities and supported and funded more than 80 resident-led projects focused on health, well-being, and quality of life efforts.

Moreover, the Central Texas Network has energized seven network weavers to seek elected office, and several have succeeded in stepping into positions of power, including Cheryl Lee, the first Black woman ever elected to the Bastrop City Council.

The Central Texas Network continues to grow. The Network has created connections within immigrant and Spanish-speaking communities in Caldwell and Hays counties, where a growing community of immigrant women is catalyzing a new network. Additionally, in Eastern Williamson County, multiple groups of residents are collaborating to support health equity and social justice issues such as mental health and trauma, education equity, and advocacy to fight against the marginalization of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Over the last three years, the Foundation has learned that resident-led networks such as the ones the Foundation supports in our rural communities are effective ways of engaging those most impacted by health inequities. We are committed to continuing this work of supporting and mobilizing the community to achieve progress on their own health priorities in our 2024-2030 Strategic Plan, Pathways to Health Equity.

Introduction

We are committed to learning alongside rural communities to ideate and co-create community-designed solutions that, over time, tackle complex social issues while building community capacity and amplifying voices not often heard. We are humbled to do this work with the community by leveraging the expertise, wisdom, and lived experiences of multiple partners, including residents, community groups, nonprofits, government, school districts, business, philanthropy and others. Further, this solution-driven work is community-inspired and community-led to tackle some of our region’s most pressing issues to better support our thriving rural communities.

Since 2018, the Foundation has committed time and resources in Bastrop County and the surrounding communities to engage with residents at all levels – from individuals to organizations to networks and systems – to better understand what matters to them, hear about their ideas to improve the community, and work together, along with other funders, to translate those ideas into effective, rural-relevant solutions.

In partnership with the residents of Bastrop County through Network Weaving, a community engagement and leadership development approach, residents are beginning to develop new relationships to catalyze and leverage community strengths to empower residents to transform their community in ways that improve the conditions in which people live, work, and play. 

Community Catalysts in Action 

Network Weavers begin with a hub and spoke network, with the weaver as the hub connecting to spokes throughout the county. We all know someone in our community who is adept at making connections, and who has the vision, the energy, and the social skills to connect and catalyze diverse individuals and groups and start information flowing to and from them to address an issue. 

Network Weavers can strategically grow the network of engaged residents by creating new relationships and opportunities for residents to begin identifying community needs, organize for action, and to learn how to bring about change in resources, opportunities, services, and policies.