This is what change looks like! On February 24, more than 60 healthcare professionals joined us for our first ever Affirming Provider Networking Event. Hosted by our Health Equity team, it was a rare chance for providers who work with LGBTQ+ patients to connect with each other and share ideas, experiences, and resources. Change is rooted in relationships, and opportunities like this are crucial for creating more inclusive and connected systems of care.

Sometimes the most productive thing we can do is pause, reflect, and connect.

That’s the goal of ChangeLine’s annual State of the Onion: a daylong celebration of each other and the work we did together over the last year. We talk about what we’re proud of, what we learned, where we stumbled, and what we’re carrying forward with us. We also refill our tanks with shared meals and shallot of laughter (get it?). 

One of the best parts of our work is bringing people together to talk about how we can work together to strengthen our community. Recently, we had the opportunity to do just that.

We invited an incredible group of civic leaders from across El Paso County, along with Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, to join us for a thoughtful, nonpartisan conversation about civic leadership and shared accountability.

As we close out the last year and look toward the new one, many people I know are tired in a way that rest alone won’t fix. The work has been heavy and the uncertainty ongoing. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stretched, or quietly wondering how to sustain this work over the long haul, you’re not alone. And yet, despite everything, countless people continue to show up, to care deeply, and to fight for something better. That matters.

In November, our board gathered for its annual retreat—a day of learning, conversation, and reflection. It was an intentional pause meant to reconnect with one another and with the purpose behind our work. The board, along with members of our staff, finished the day in a fun and meaningful way: cooking alongside Chef Brother Luck.

Every day, mission-driven organizations pour time and energy into improving their communities. They respond to needs, run programs, build partnerships, and try to create impact where it’s needed most. But when all the attention goes outward, it can be easy to overlook something that matters just as much: the internal systems and habits that make—or limit—their effectiveness.

Each January, regions across the country take part in their own Point-in-Time (PIT) Count. At first glance, the count might seem like just another HUD requirement: a single night’s snapshot of who is unhoused in a given area. But in Colorado Springs this year, it became something more. It became a testament to the power of community.

ChangeLine and the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care (PPCoC) welcomed more than 40 guests for a screening of Until We’re All Home, which follows six communities across the U.S. that are measurably reducing homelessness through the Built for Zero movement—a data-driven, human-centered approach to ending homelessness for good. But this event was about more than watching a film. It was an invitation—to listen, reflect, and imagine what’s possible when people come together across agencies, sectors, and lived experiences to create change that lasts.

As ChangeLine transitions the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care to new leadership, CEO Amber Ptak shares how this change strengthens our community’s collective capacity to end homelessness—and why doing what’s right sometimes means letting go.

Let’s be honest: Solving big community challenges can feel like trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose. There are dozens of efforts happening, all with good intentions, but sometimes it feels like everyone’s working in parallel instead of in sync.

That’s where collective impact comes in.

When people have the chance to connect across differences, real change becomes possible. Civic hubs like ChangeLine exist to make that happen. But what is a civic hub, anyway?

Think of a civic hub as a college quad. It’s a place (sometimes physical, sometimes not) where people can safely come together across differences, talk about what matters most, and actually work toward solutions. Civic hubs connect people and organizations who might not otherwise sit at the same table, and they make sure that every voice, especially those most impacted by an issue, has a chance to be heard.

“We aren’t just convening. We are investing in leaders.” - Amber Ptak, CEO

Becoming ChangeLine goes beyond updating our logo. It’s an emblem of our belief that change is possible and non-negotiable.

Many of the systems we rely on for the health of our community are broken, and we can’t fix broken systems with the same thinking that created them. So, rather than working within outdated structures, we’re building new pathways and connections that support large-scale community-led change.

Change is the only constant.

In our last Becoming ChangeLine blog post, Where We’ve Been, we covered our history as Community Health Partnership (CHP) and how the collaboration that brought it to life sparked a regional movement that still exists today.

Since our founding, we’ve changed in response to the natural shifts happening within the community. In the words of our CEO Amber Ptak, “Systems are changing all day, and the point of our work is to change those systems in a way that benefits the people who the systems are failing.”

Change is in our name now—but it has always been part of our story.

For more than three decades, we’ve walked alongside our community under the name Community Health Partnership (CHP). Founded in 1992 by a visionary group of healthcare leaders, our organization began with a simple but radical idea: the best way to improve health was to work together.

After more than 30 years as Community Health Partnership (CHP), we’ve stepped into a new chapter with a new name: ChangeLine, a civic hub that brings people, ideas, and organizations together to take on challenges too big for any one group to solve alone.

ChangeLine’s (formerly Community Health Partnership’s or CHP) mission is to transform the way people work together to solve challenges affecting the health of communities. The issues ChangeLine engages in are not only complex, they are also chaotic. There are no simple solutions and decisions are never obvious.