Community partnerships in action Published April 23, 2018 By Aryn Lockhart 17th Training Wing Public Affairs SAN ANGELO, Texas -- Goodfellow leadership and San Angelo civic leaders met at the San Angelo Community Medical Center to discuss partnership agreements April 19. As discussions about future and current agreements took place inside the hospital, an example of these partnerships was taking place outside. Members of the 17th Training Wing Medical Group worked together with SACMC hospital employees to demonstrate mobile decontamination tents. Mark Olson, the facilities director for SACMC, organized the training with Staff Sgt. Wesley Taylor, team lead for the 17th Training Wing decontamination team. “The training was extremely valuable. It was a good group effort,” said Olson. Olson described how SACMC and Goodfellow have an established partnership and when he recognized many of his employees had not seen the decontamination tent set up, he contacted Taylor. Together they organized a training opportunity where the Air Force would display their decontamination tent and the SAMC employees could practice setting up their own. “This is the first time I’ve ever conducted training with an outside agency and it was phenomenal to see what happens in the real world,” said Taylor. He remarked upon how members of the Air Force have a variety of jobs, but in an emergency situation, they would mobilize to form the decontamination team and this was the same case for civilian counterparts. “We were happy to lead the way on the Air Force front and community partnerships. It was great to get out there and work with the civilian world,” said Taylor. As the training exercise continued outside SACMC, discussions within the facility focused on the status of current agreements and outlining tasks to move new initiatives forward. Partnership agreements were formalized in 2013 by the Air force. This program allowed bases and their local communities to create formalized agreements to share resources and knowledge. Currently Goodfellow and San Angelo lead the Air Force with 29 agreements. “It’s amazing in five years what this community has done. We share a lot of the same goals within this community and obviously, we want our community to be a destination where people want to come,” said Judge Stephen Floyd. The partnership meeting including working groups as military and civilians brainstormed solutions and strategies for new initiatives for Goodfellow and San Angelo. Judge Floyd’s remarks were followed by Col. Ricky Mills, 17th Training Wing commander, who shared his vision, “I want this to be an assignment of choice. We want the very best to want to come to Goodfellow not only because of our mission, but because of partnership in this small community.”
