| |
Vibrant
Communities and Small Scale Enterprise
Comments
by Al Kowitz
A very
clear picture emerges from three recent reports on creating vibrant
communities and economies in rural America. The first of these
elements is creating opportunity for expanding the knowledge and
skills of local citizens. According to the Intelligent Communities
Forum, “Effective education, training and workforce development
that builds a labor force able to perform “knowledge work” is a
significant indicator of a successful community. Rural areas that
expect to effectively participate in a more complex and technologically
sophisticated economy, will find that an educated and skilled pool
of workers is an absolute requirement. Stevens County is fortunate
to have leadership and educational facilities in place to provide
educational opportunity for local citizens. Community Colleges
of Spokane and WSU’s Distance Degree Program provide opportunity
for attaining Associate, Bachelors and Master Degrees without having
to leave the area. CCS, WSU Cooperative Extension, public schools,
and the Stevens County Library Distinct provide a broad range of
informal and continuing education programs. Still a gap exists
between metropolitan and rural areas, so we must be diligent to
refine our offerings to builds the capacity needed for our citizens.
A second
critical element of vibrant communities is significant deployment
of broadband digital capacity to serve the business, service and
educational sectors of the community. Dr. Andrew Cohill, one of
the architects of Blacksburg Electronic Village in West Virginia
emphasizes that a robust telecommunications infrastructure is critical
for economic development in rural communities. The fact that Colville
and Stevens County had upgraded its bandwidth capability and would
in fact provide redundancy in the near future was an absolute requirement
for Washington Dental Service. Without these capabilities, Colville
would not have been on their map for creating a satellite office.
Our next steps are to create digital options that increase the capacity
of local business to serve their customers and to increase their
customer base. We must also create digital options for building
capacity to serve community groups and interests.
A third
component to building vibrant communities is to create an entrepreneurial
spirit that supports development of local enterprise with local
or regional access to capital for funding the development of these
new businesses. One of the benefits of local enterprise is the circulation
of local capital in the community, thus creating a multiplier effect.
When a dollar enters a community and is then spent
outside the community, its benefit is felt only once. Keeping dollars
circulating locally multiplies their benefit, adding more value,
paying more wages, financing more investments, and ultimately creating
more jobs. Local leaders in vibrant communities understand the
needs of existing businesses and find ways to help them expand and
become economically viable.
References.
Lionel
J. Beaulieu, “Creating Vibrant Communities & Economies in Rural
America,” Southern Rural Development Center, August 2002.
Andrew
Cohill, “Economic Development in the Information Age,” The Knowledge
Democracy Center, 2002.
Intelligent
Community Forum, “Benchmarking the Intelligent Community, July,
2001.
akowitz@wsu.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
