MARSHALL — Marshall Community Action leaders are pleased with the results of the United Community Action Partnership.

The partnership consists of the five counties from the former Western Community Action (Lincoln, Lyon, Redwood, Cottonwood and Jackson) and the four counties from the former Heartland Community Action based out of Willmar (Kandiyohi, Renville, Meeker and McLeod). The counties completed the merger in 2016.

“Both agencies thought a merger would be a good thing,” said UCAP Executive Director Nancy Straw. “It continues a 50-year tradition  toward more of a regional  operation.”

Western Community Action, Heartland and other Community Action offices were founded in the 1960s during President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, an effort to completely eliminate poverty in the United States. Some counties started on their own, but most decided to merge with others.

Lincoln, Lyon and Redwood counties comprised Western Community Action at first. The Cottonwood and Jackson county partnership later joined WCA to make it a five county agency.

Discussion about a wider merger started in 2013, Straw said. They also included the Prairie Five agency in the Montevideo area and the Southwest Minnesota Opportunities Council in the southwest corner of Minnesota.

Straw said Prairie Five dropped out of the plan during the discussion phase. The SMOC board of directors later took a vote and a majority chose not to participate.

“The two of us who were left decided to keep going,” she said. “We felt there was still a lot of potential.”

Marshall became the UCAP headquarters. Some programs are based out of Willmar, so the program determines which location with whom the office clients work.

“There wasn’t a real question about where to put the headquarters,” Straw said. “It would be Marshall or Willmar, and Marshall is more centralized in the service area.”

Marshall is located closer to Willmar and about the distance as Meeker and McLeod counties as it is to Jackson County on the Iowa border. Straw said she spends about 75 percent of her time in Marshall on average but usually visits Willmar once a week and regularly visits each of UCAP’s other satellite offices.

Community and Family Support Director Angela Larson said both groups of counties contributed programs that the other group didn’t have. Two examples are tax preparation clinics that started with WCA and a vehicle purchase program that was launched by Heartland. Staff try for a balance between travel and long distance technology, such as videoconferencing.

“We use technology as much as we can,” Larson said. “In some cases there’s a need to travel. We need to see each other on a regular basis and talk about our goals in person.”‘

She added that staff have felt confident about the merger before and after it was implemented. She noted a shared vision of helping clients afford winter energy, improve their homes, give young children a good start in education with Head Start, proving low-costs transit service and other objectives.

Christy Lundberg, who serves as UCAP office coordinator, said teamwork helps to run a nine-county agency every day.

“Communication is very important to having things run smoothly,” Lundberg said. “We try to meet the needs of each client based on their situation. They’re encouraged to use all of the services that would be helpful to them.”