Engaging Communities

Community engagement has been a part of my life forever. 

[No Audio: Karen Jacobs, Administrator, Office of Community and Faith Engagement]

The mission of the Office of Community and Faith Engagement is to promote partnerships and engage 
communities in collaborative efforts to enhance the wellbeing of all Oklahomans. 

[No Audio:  Infant Mortality]

In 2014, the director asked that we start looking at the safe sleep issues because of the Child Death 
Review Board and the number of infant deaths that were occurring. And so this office got together with 
the state health department, which kinda drilled down to the Oklahoma City/County Health Department. 
Infant mortality amongst the African American population – it’s almost twice as high, but not just in 
Oklahoma – it’s a national rate as well. 

We developed a task force at first and we started talking about different ways we felt the community 
could be aware of the disparity but also that 90 percent of the deaths were preventable. We wanted to 
make that known: that we could prevent these infant deaths from happening. 

The Oklahoma City/County Health Department does the data collection; and they have seen a pretty 
significant drop – little over seven percent drop in the northeast Oklahoma City area - and we kinda 
attribute the success in that area to the efforts that we have implemented specifically the Leading 
Ladies for Healthy Babies. It is a mentoring project so they can be mentors in the congregation; so if 
they see a pregnant mom, they can provide that support, that mom-to-mom support that they may not 
have. It can be just a phone call, ‘how’s this going,’ ‘so you need any support? do you need anything?’ 
We’ve kinda built support systems around the mom. 

We’re still meeting different congregations; no specific type of religious belief - we welcome all – 
bringing in the different cultures, the different perspectives, the different stakeholders, the different 
community organizations.

[No Audio:  Volunteers and Partnerships]

Through the Volunteer/Partner Recognition Ceremony, we encourage local offices to recognize all their 
partners and volunteers – but at the state level, we have a volunteer council, which is a representative 
of all the programs, that reviews all the nominations for our state volunteer awards. 

[No Audio: program cover, ‘There’s no success, without “u”!  2017 Volunteer Partner Recognition 
Awards Ceremony]

And so we have a beautiful recognition; the director comes and presents the certificates of 
accomplishments that includes businesses, individuals, community partners, groups; if they have done 
something to make a big contribution to our families, then we try to recognize them and each year, it 
gets better and better. We couldn’t provide the services to our clients without their help. 


[No Audio: Christmas for Foster Children]
Several years ago, we – DHS – met with a church; a large church that wanted to participate in the 
Christmas effort and it evolved to a statewide Christmas drive for all foster children in DHS custody.  
It’s a big undertaking; about a six-month project. In July, we do the wish lists; they go out to all the 
county offices to child welfare workers so they can get them to the foster parents and they have a 
couple months to get them back in. 

Right under 6,000 wish lists were filled - filled a semi to the very end of it – three bobtail trucks; stuffed 
and filled trucks; donated warehouse space. It’s a lot of work. And right after the first week in December 
to December 24th, we are distributing and making sure that every child has something for Christmas. 

[No Audio:  Ongoing Mission]

So what we’ve learned is that community engagement is vital. And so our community partners 
and our community stakeholders and our volunteers that help make our initiatives successful – 
it’s because of their support and their involvement; so we rely a lot on others. And I get so 
excited and so gratified to know that we have built those relationships and it’s not for this office; 
it’s for the betterment of the children and families we serve. It’s connecting the dots – that we 
can all come together and we can make it work. And that we can help and serve one another.

[No Audio:  In 2017, the DHS Office of Community and Faith Engagement joined community 
partners to coordinate and support: Safe Sleep Initiative, State Charitable Campaign, Leading 
Ladies for Healthy Babies, Fatherhood Initiative, Volunteer/Partner Recognition Ceremony, 
Domestic Violence Awareness, Volunteerism, Thanksgiving meal donation, 6,000 Christmas 
wish lists for DHS foster children and youth]