For the past year, Heron has been working to help people and communities help themselves out of poverty within the San Joaquin Valley. This work has been guided by a series of strategic questions, as well as ongoing relationships with partners on the ground in Fresno County. In this post, we discuss our efforts to better integrate data as we try to understand the opportunities and challenges facing the San Joaquin Valley.
Heron’s Strategic Priorities
As Heron continues its work in the region, we try to balance between several (sometimes competing) priorities:
What That Means in Practice
To balance between these (sometimes competing) priorities, we have been trying to do three things:
We also check in with our capital markets partners to get their perspectives on the places in which we operate. We periodically ask our fixed income managers and friends at rating agencies, for example, to connect us with the analysts that cover the San Joaquin Valley so we can get their qualitative perspectives on the trends in Fresno County.
Growing Our Resources
As we continue our work in the San Joaquin Valley, maintaining a collection of data sources helps us understand local challenges. Growing our resources will be a constant effort, as we continue to search for and integrate a variety of databases and local news sources.
In an effort to refine our work, we consistently ask our thought partners to help us fill in the gaps. What other data sets should we be using? What metrics should we pay attention to? How can we make our collection of resources more comprehensive? What local news sources should we be reading? What metrics are our partners using to inform their work? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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