POST FALLS — Kip Sharbono understands the power of collaboration when serving the community.
“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit,” said Sharbono, the Coeur d’Alene Kroc Center director, Tuesday at a Post Falls Chamber of Commerce event.
Sharbono joined Boys and Girls Club Executive Director Mark Kuhnhausen, Lake City Community Church youth pastor Jared Wright and Canvas church Pastor Nate Day on a panel to discuss the power of nonprofit collaboration.
“Working together we can tackle so much,” Sharbono said.
Part of Sharbono’s approach to meeting the needs of the community at large is to ask questions.
“Ask — don’t tell,” Sharbono said. “’How can we serve you?’ Not, ‘this is how we’re going to serve you.’”
Kroc Center staff identified seven local schools with a high percentage of students on free or reduced lunches. They inquired of the seven school principals about their needs, Sharbono said.
The feedback the Kroc staff members received was that there was a lack of positive male role models, and that elementary school staff were seeing a lot of male-female student interactions that would be more common on a high school campus.
The schools were asking for help, Sharbono said.
“We said, ‘that’s your ask. I think we can do that,’” Sharbono said.
Teaming up with others, like Wright, a youth pastor, the group committed to provide support during recesses once a month on the schools’ highest disciplinary rate days. The collaborative effort produced the Mobile Kroc program. The team saw a 65% decrease in disciplinary rates at the majority of the schools they served, Sharbono said.
Mobile Kroc is now educating others who want to help, extending the program to serve the Sandpoint community, for example.
“We want to pass the baton,” Sharbono said. “Equip others who want to help.”
Kuhnhausen credits collaborations with the community for the success of the Boys and Girls Club as well.
“It took a bunch of folks in this community to come together and say we needed a place for our young people,” Kuhnhausen said.
In the beginning, the Boys and Girls Club operated out of a church basement, Kuhnhausen said. Now the club welcomes between 100 and 200 kids every day after school and throughout the summer.
“Have the willingness to support, rather than lead,” Sharbono commented. “We aren’t competition for each other. We want to get back to, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’”
Sharbono considers there is an immense amount of need in our community. Each person who is helped is considered a success story, he said.
“That’s the spirit of collaboration,” Kuhnhausen said. “You roll your sleeves up and put yourself out there.”