
Community Engagement
Offerings & Successful Projects
Authentic Connections
Get in touch to find out more about how your business or organization can make authentic, on the ground connections to benefit the entire community.
Project Management & Community Initiatives
Get assistance in managing that important project to make the broadest & most significant impact on your community. Involve ALL stakeholders and listen to those who will be most affected.
Volunteer Projects
Volunteering should not be about volunteering to check a box. It is about examining what truly needs to be accomplished, how to work in partnerships to do so and broad reflection. Iceberg Consulting can assist your group in making constructive decisions and connections.
"Mellisa has an uncanny ability to work across cultures to bring marginalized voices and perspectives into important conversations and issues. She is an outside the box thinker, and uses creative techniques to get things done and bring positive change to the world, especially here in Burlington. I would highly recommend Iceberg Consulting to any organization looking for support with community engagement, project management, facilitation, interpretation and intercultural communications, website design and management and much more. "
—Will Clavelle, Economic Development Specialist, City of Burlington
Successful Projects
ONE Mask Initiative: 40,000 masks
Realizing that many people in her Old North End neighborhood did not have access to masks when the state mandated face coverings in May 2020, Mellisa started the ONE Mask Initiative with the goal of providing 500 quality masks to youth, low-income, BIPOC and members of former refugee and asylum seeker communities. Nine months later, Mellisa had partnered with various organizations to seek funding, purchase, manage volunteer mask makers, and distribute over 40,000 masks primarily in Burlington and Winooski. Over 6,000 masks featuring Black Lives Matter logos, including half in child size.
www.VermontForAll.com
Mellisa co-founded and manages the website VermontForAll.com (formally www.NewAmericansInVermont.com) dedicated to providing COVID-19 information, community resources and more in over a dozen languages. Because life saving information should be a right.
In the first three months of the pandemic, over 200 people from around the world were accessing the website EVERY day. In less than seven months, there has been over 6,000 unique visitors to the site which includes COVID-19 information, infographics on topics such as how to wear a mask, videos from around the world, information for local food sources and much more. Before information was readily available, Mellisa used her world-wide network to crowdsource translations for infographics, fundraising for local translators to be paid.
As the pandemic changes the fabric of the community, so does the website which will continue to meet the needs of the community, as they request.
Volunteer Management: Many, Many Projects
Various major clothing drives, working with AALV, organizing drivers to drop-off food, diaper distribution, and so many more required a record amount of volunteers and hours of management. Mellisa has personally worked with over 1,000 volunteers in Chittenden County over the past five years.