Anyone can champion the cause. Whether you're speaking out to improve education, income and health, reaching out to politicians, or wearing the LIVE UNITED shirt to show your support, you can inspire hope and create opportunities for a better tomorrow. So go ahead and advocate in a LIVE UNITED world. Do it in public. Be visible. Be loud.

To respond to the changing environment, United Way of Superior - Douglas County has embarked on a transformation process to more effectively position the organization to take action to address the most pressing issues of today, and tomorrow's needs and opportunities in our community. United Way partners with and allocates funding to programs that are committed to achieving significant community impact.

United Way is creating real, lasting changes where you live, by focusing on the building blocks for a better life. EDUCATION, INCOME AND HEALTH.

• Education: Helping Children and Youth Succeed
• Income: Promoting Financial Stability and Independence
• Health: Improving People's Health.

Goals

Education is essential to getting and keeping a job with a livable wage and health benefits. An income adequate to pay for today's necessities and save for the future provides families some sense of financial stability. Access to quality health care keeps children on track in school and adults productive at work. Remove any one of these building blocks and the other two topple.

Working with many partners, United Way continually looks for the most effective ways to help people gain access to educational, economic and health-related opportunities. To achieve further progress, it is now necessary to measure where we stand in these areas and look ahead to where we need to be as a community. For this reason, United Way launched an effort in 2007 to identify troubling social issues in our community through a community-wide needs assessment.

Our transformation process will allow us to track the progress we, as a community, are making to decrease or end some of the troubling social issues we have identified.