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SPOTLIGHTA
Practitioner´s View of When looking for professional development opportunities, community development practitioners are generally faced with limited funds. The foremost concern is,"What will I get out of this training and what will I be able to bring back to my community?" The Heartland Center for Leadership Development designs its Jackson Hole institutes to be hands-on learning experiences and to provide practitioners with proven community development techniques. A recent graduate of Helping Small Towns Succeed, held every October in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, shares how he applied what he learned back home. Jonathan
Wimer is the executive director of the Jackson County Development
Corporation in Holton, Kansas. His organization is the only one
of its kind addressing county-wide economic development issues in
the area. Jackson County includes nine towns and the Potawatomi
Indian Reservation. Prior to his current position, Jonathan was
with the Texas Department of Commerce working in the areas of national
and international business recruitment. Jonathan is originally from
the Jackson County area and returned to the area in 1995. In search
of community development techniques to supplement his current work,
Jonathan discovered the Heartland Center and attended the Helping
Small Towns Succeed institute in October, 1999. |
| Q: | What did you gain from attending Helping Small Towns Succeed? |
| A: | The training
provides many opportunities to meet other practitioners. The hands-on
structure of the training provided fun interaction, active learning
and made the conference more valuable. I also attended to gain more
background and materials on community development techniques, and
I am currently using several of the Heartland Center´s materials.
What I like most about the materials is that they can be applied to
all communities regardless of size, location, or local economy. Any
community can apply these techniques to improve themselves. |
| Q: | Did you make any new connections with people as a result of attending Helping Small Towns Succeed? |
| A: | I believe networking
is a very necessary part of community and economic development work.
It is a difficult thing to quantify and at times justify. I remain
in contact with several of the training participants. |
| Q: | Is there an instance where Helping Small Towns Succeed influenced your own work? |
| A: | All the information
that was presented at the training is of no value unless practitioners
put it to use and share it with the communities they serve. I have
been working with the area newspaper to print a weekly column featuring
various community development concepts. Each week I outline a community
development concept and provide examples of how this concept has been
successfully applied locally. I started with the Heartland Center´s
publication 6 Myths about the Future of Small Towns.
Currently, the column is featuring each of the Heartland Center´s
20 Clues to Rural Community Survival. Presenting these
concepts to the community gives people the opportunity to think about
how they might be applied locally and county-wide. I believe this
will help the community to better understand the different facets
of community development and nurture interest. I would like to be
able to take this to the next level in the future by providing community
development workshops, presentations to city councils and town hall
meetings. This would provide opportunities to gain a better understanding
of each community´s issues. |