Greene County taking charge of its future

By Nick Schneider Cam Trampke makes a point during her part of the HomeTown Competitiveness program on Thursday at the fairgrounds.Trampke serves as one of the local team leaders.

It did so with a four-hour workshop meeting to explain the components of the rural community development program.

More than 75 individuals attended the session that was staged at the Greene County Cooperative Extension Service community room at the fairgrounds.

By Nick Schneider Ed Morrison, with the Purdue Center for Regional Development, was a guest speaker at a local kickoff workshop for the Indiana HomeTown Competetiveness initiative Thursday at the Greene County Fairgrounds.

Greene County is one nine communities in the state to be selected to participate in this rural economic development project. It is overseen by the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs.

Indiana HomeTown Competitiveness (IHTC) -- which originated from a model developed in Nebraska -- is a community economic development approach that focuses on people.

It is built on four foundation pillars:

* Youth

* Leadership

* Entrepreneurship

* Philanthropy

Ed Morrison, from the Purdue Center for Regional Development in West Lafayete, was the guest speaker for the workshop. He supports the HTC concept and said it will work.

"It gives you some focus points -- leadership, entrepreneurship, youth and leadership. These are all critical areas. We need leadership in these conversations and say 'what can we get done?' 'what is the big picture'," he told the gathering.

Kerry Conway, an IHTC team leader and executive director of the Greene County Foundation, said Greene County's involvement in the initiative started about 18 months ago when a small group of community leaders came together and had lunch in Linton.

"We talked about how we could approach economic development as a rural community collaboratively. We had about eight people at that meeting."

She explained that the group looked at the HomeTown Competitiveness model from Nebraska that had received national attention and financial backing from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in 2005.

"It looked like something that was really going to be a good fit for Greene County. We were excited about it and started worked on it," Conway said.

Conway said that excitement was further enhanced when the group found out that the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs out of the Lt. Governor's office had selected the Nebraska program as a model they wanted to represent in the state.

"We jumped on that bandwagon right away," she said.

Greene County was selected as one of nine communities in the state to participate in Phase 1 of the initiative.

IHTC is different from other community development efforts because it focuses on internal assets and resources. It's goal is to access where a community is -- here and now -- and to build on the current capacity of the four pillar elements, according to Conway.

Conway pointed out that the assessment is being done through a survey.

"This will be a very open process and we want input from the public," she stressed. "Anyone who wants to become involved in the IHTC program will have many, many opportunities to do that. The door is open. We will help you find your place in this process."

Four other Greene County community leaders recently attended a four-day orientation session on the Indiana HomeTown Competitiveness program in Indianapolis with Conway.

They include: Lindy Miller, Extension educator, Purdue Cooperative Extension Service; Cheryl Hamilton, director, Linton-Stockton Chamber of Commerce; Joan Bethell, director, Greene County Economic Development Corporation; and Cam Trampke, director, Greene County Community Learning Center.

Phase 1 of the IHTC initiative will be completed by June 30.

Over the next four months the IHTC process will assess the community and find ways to:

* Encourage our young people and young families to stay in the community.

* Encourage and support small business start-ups and entrepreneurship.

* Encourage Greene County's citizens to become more active in leadership roles.

* Encourage charitable giving to support local activities and family businesses to continue in the community.

A part of this process is completing a two-page community survey will take about 20 minutes to complete. Information gathered in the survey will help the committees access where the county is at in terms of assets it already has.

The information will also be used to determine what priorities need to be pursued to insure the core focus of the four pillar areas can be met, Conway said.

Another team leader, Bethell, said it's important to get a diverse range of opinions and information from all parts of the county.

"Everything we are doing, we need to pull together to make this happen," she said. "This must include those forward looking people. We have more to offer (as a county). We just have to tap into it."

Team leader Trampke added, "I am excited about this. I think this is a wonderful opportunity for all of us."

The survey is available at the Greene County Foundation office, the Community Learning Center of Greene County at White River Valley High School, the Linton-Stockton Chamber of Commerce office and at the Greene County Cooperative Extension Service office.

The survey can also be accessed online at http://www.clcinfo.org/greene_schedule.p.... Click on "Greene" and then "Class Schedule" and scroll down to find the link to the HomeTown Competitiveness Survey.