According to Ellspermann Indiana Hometown Competitiveness Program a “win, win, win”
The Jasper Chamber of Commerce hosted a meeting with State Representative Sue Ellspermann today at the Jasper Train Depot to begin planning for the Home Town Competitiveness Initiative. The City of Jasper was chosen along with Huntington County, Johnson County, Perry County and Jefferson County to participate in the third rendition of the program in Indiana.
Fourteen communities have participated in the program, including Ferdinand in 2008, since Indiana adopted the program. The initiative is designed to engage local leaders and citizens to help assess and create homegrown strategies for increasing entrepreneurship, engaging and retaining the youth, building leaders, increasing philanthropy, and maintaining strong families.
The original program was designed around four pillars and they are based on the areas of focus that are most important to rural community success. The program originated in Nebraska and the four original pillars included entrepreneurship, youth, leadership, and philanthropy. Indiana added a fifth pillar; families. Jasper added inclusiveness as the sixth pillar.
“We added the sixth pillar at the training program because we have heard for years about Jasper being a closed community. We want to change that image.” Nancy Eckerle Jasper Chamber of Commerce Executive Director explained. “We hear all the time about how individuals move here and they don’t feel like they are part of the community. We wanted to be sure to address that.”
Today’s meeting was an introduction and training session designed to kick start the process for the team. An explanation of the program was given by Ellspermann and then a training session in which she explained the roles of the team in the next phases of the program.
Six individuals have been assigned as Pillar Team Chairs.
- Alli Baer – Youth Pillar
- Ann Recker (owner Chocolate Bliss) – Entrepreneurship Pillar
- Donna Oeding (Director Dubois County Health Department) – Family Pillar
- Brent Sternberg (Old National Bank) – Philanthropy Pillar
- Jake Bower (Ruxer Ford Lincoln) – Inclusiveness Pillar
- Andrea Hedinger – Leadership Pillar
Their assignments now are to form teams from the community to assess the community’s strengths and weaknesses in regards to individual pillars. The group will use surveys, interviews, focus groups, and audits of existing plans/activities to gather data and then develop strategies to pursue identified opportunities to enhance prosperity and quality of life in Jasper.
The Pillar Chairs will be working with Community Catalyst, Mona Hoffman, Nancy Eckerle as Community Coordinator. Mona and Nancy will serve on the the Steering Committee along with Alan Johnson, Rick Stradtner, Terry Seitz, Jim Skillman and Diane Schwenk
According to Ellspermann this program is important to the Brain Drain the area is experiencing. “In less than a decade in Dubois County we have lost 16 percent of our 25-44 year olds.”
Ellspermann explained that without this age group our communities are operating with less youthful energy and leadership.
The group will be hosting the HTC Community Kick-Off on September 19. The assessments will be conducted until December and then the findings will be presented at the Opportunity Retreat in early January. The media will continue to work with the group in reporting their findings and increasing awareness of the processes involved.
The local site operated by the team is www.jasperhtc.com and updates will appear there as the process continues.
Alan Johnson, Dean of VUJC, stated he felt this was a great program for the community especially in light of some negative developments in Jasper. “This is such a positive effort and we really want to build some enthusiasm. We’ve got a couple of negatives going on in town; the biomass conflict and the library conflict. We really need to emphasize the positive on this and the potential.”
Ellspermann replied, “This is a win, win, win, for the community.”
