Rogers State University staff member Catherine Heimdale, administrative assistant for RSU’s Department of History and Political Science, wants to help the members of her extended community – the communities of RSU, Claremore and Rogers County.
To this end, Heimdale has founded a new coalition to connect those in need with the resources available to them – a coalition called Better Together in Rogers County.
“Better Together in Rogers County is something I had the idea for last spring (2023),” Heimdale said. “My original thought was to create a coalition with the goal of helping pregnant and parenting teens. After I talked about my idea with Hannah Moore of Safenet Services, I decided to broaden that scope and develop a new coalition to help everyone in Claremore and Rogers County.”
Founding the new organization required Heimdale to step down as president of Healthy Community Partnerships (HCP) of Rogers County, but because of her experience with that group, she had numerous contacts in the community which would benefit her in the formation of the new coalition.
“We started having meetings and discussions about what we could do to help people,” she said. “Our first public event will be a resource fair, open to the entire community and held at RSU.”
The event, called Better Together in Rogers County Fall Resource Fair, will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, in the Dr. Carolyn Taylor Center Ballroom at Rogers State University in Claremore. It will feature representatives from nearly 50 different groups and organizations that offer assistance and resources to citizens of Rogers County. Representatives from groups focusing on careers, education, counseling, family safety, food security, clothing, health, childcare, life skills, youth, transportation, fire department, law officers and more will be on hand to showcase their available services and resources.
“So many times, people may not know the resources that are available to them – they don’t know what they don’t know,” Heimdale said. “It’s amazing, the resources we have in Rogers County. We just want people to become aware of and take advantage of them.”
Heimdale said the coalition plans to host resource fairs twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring, with the spring resource fair scheduled for March 30 at Northeast Tech in Claremore.
For more information about Better Together in Rogers County, contact Heimdale at 918-343-6811 or by email at [email protected].