Mercer County Housing Authority 80 Jefferson Avenue, Sharon, Pa 16146 724.342.

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Community Events
Mercer County Housing Authority
I. Executive Summary For years, Mercer County Housing Authority has had a negative reputation among its neighbors, as well as its residents. MCHAs goal is to change this reputation and show surrounding communities that the residents are just as motivated and hardworking as anyone. We also want to show that MCHA is merely a stepping stone to where the residents want to be. We hope to help MCHA achieve this goal by planning and implementing an event in which members of MCHA communities and surrounding communities may participate in. We will invite local news stations and newspapers to cover the event and shed a positive light on MCHA. Through our survey research, we learned that the members of MCHAs communities have previously enjoyed holiday events, so we have decided to implement and Easter egg hunt and luncheon. We will provide gender neutral prizes for different age ranges. II. Publics: Residents The residents of Mercer County Housing Authority is our primary public. They are extremely important to the success of our proposal because we believe that before we can change a bad reputation on the outside we must first make sure the people on the inside do not have negative feelings as well. The residents ages range from 0-80+ years old. There are numerous properties and community locations in Mercer with a total population of 1,719: 1,078 of those being female and 641 being male Employees Media Government

Goal

Start to improve the image and the bad reputation that comes with Public Housing

Objectives Informational: Increase awareness among external communities of Mercer County Housing Authoritys community relations efforts by 80 percent. Increase internal awareness of Mercer County Housing Authoritys community events. Attitudinal: Create a favorable attitude among 70 percent of the community about attending community events. Create a favorable attitude among 60 percent of the community members to help promote community events. Behavioral: Motivate community members to attend community events in their neighborhood. Motivate community members to reach out and build relationships with their neighbors.

Tactics Surveys Conduct surveys to analyze how community members feel about Mercer County Housing Authoritys community events. Have a follow up focus group for residents Create a focus group with members from the community Uncontrolled media News Releases Create a template for them to use to send out news efficiently Send out news releases about upcoming community events. Send out news releases about past successful community events. Advisory Social Media Keep Mercer County Housing Authoritys Twitter page up to date on upcoming events. Use hashtag #MCHAcommunity to get the public involved and share past community event stories and pictures. Keep Mercer County Housing Authoritys Facebook page up to date about what is going on each community. Post pictures from previous community events Promotional facebook contest to help increase the pages likes.

Like and Share the Mercer County Housing Authoritys page and be entered to win a gift card.

Radio Creat Radio Reader Froggy 95/Promotes local businesses and organizations

Special Event Host an Easter egg hunt at 2-3 of Mercer County Housing Authority's community buildings for children and adults to participate in. Inside each Easter egg will be a number that will correspond with what prize they will receive. Prizes could include: Gift cards - movie theater, Sheetz Candy Smalls toys Color hunt Assign hunters a particular color(s) to find on their hunt. This is especially good when hunting with mixed ages, as it allows the younger children a chance to find a equal amount of eggs.

Research: Public housing has had a bad reputation and all around negative view for a long time, this stereotype is well known. People usually hear about negative things that come from public housing because thats what is focused on in the news and media. MCHA does not publicize the good things that go on in their communities and we hope to change that. Through already held events and a planned Easter egg hunt we plan to send out positive events to create positive media coverage. We are conducting a survey to send out to all tenants of MCHA to figure out a few things like: how strong community bonds are among tenants what kinds of activities are available in the community which ones are favored neighborhood pride community safety

We plan on facilitating a focus group method after our event to see what tenants think about the positive media coverage. Hopefully this type of research will help us to figure out what works and what does not when it comes to already planned events.