[Partnerships] Common sense approaches to building partnerships with businesses

[Lisa Deyo]

COMMON SENSE APPROACHES TO BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS WITH
BUSINESSES

Just a reminder that our online forum on Common Sense
Approaches to Building Partnerships with Businesses
starts tomorrow.  Claudine Chavanne, a community
planner in the Central Berkshire area, will lead this
discussion from May 1 to May 17. 

Claudine will describe some of her own experiences in
finding common ground and building relationships
between the adult basic education and business
communities.  She will also field listserv members'
specific questions about building relationships with
businesses in their own communities.  Claudine is a
believer in learning through sharing experiences,
successes, and challenges.  We are looking forward to
hearing from you!

Her is a brief introduction to Claudine & her work:

Building partnerships that connect people, needs and
resources is such a great feeling, says Claudine
Chavanne of Claudine Chavanne & Associates who is
leading this month's ListServe discussion.

After vowing that she would never become an
entrepreneur because "they are all just too crazy",
she started her own consulting firm two years ago to
help organizations and businesses find creative,
practical solutions to their workforce development,
public relations, and communication needs.

Her most recent projects as the local ABE community
planner have been to hold a number of focus groups for
the Community Coalition and the Adult Learning Center,
re-energize the Adult Literacy Committee in Berkshire
County, develop and distribute a countywide ABE
Provider Guide, complete a Job Training & Resource
Guide, and foster more effective communication between
the business and adult education communities.  Among
her clients is the Berkshire County Regional
Employment Board for which she has conducted a number
of employer needs assessments and focus groups,
developed a comprehensive Training Resource Guide, and
helped jump start a variety of collaborative training
partnerships among industry groups and organizations. 
 

As the former Director of Communications for a
1,200-member Chamber of Commerce, she learned first
hand what it's like to wear lots of hats and work with
all kinds of people, organizations and businesses.  
In her ten years with the Chamber, she assisted in
promoting the Chamber's mission to bring quality jobs
and quality education to the Berkshires through a
broad range of responsibilities in communications,
membership services, marketing, public relations,
fundraising, strategic planning, and membership
acquisition and retention.  Among her fondest memories
are the business-education partnerships that partnered
one or more businesses with a specific school; the
"Good News" breakfasts that she helped initiate; a
monthly Chamber newsletter on business, economic
development and education issues that she edited for
the local newspaper with a circulation of 32,000; and
the hundreds of community volunteers who came forward
to help make it all work.

In a previous life, Claudine was the Marketing
Department Manager at a local bank known as the
"Popcorn Bank" because of the free popcorn they gave
depositors each Thursday at the nearby antique popcorn
wagon, a teacher of French and Spanish in the local
junior high school, and a public relations intern at
the American Dental Association in Chicago.



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