Bartholomew, Jay counties embark on grant to revitalize rural communities
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For most grants given to not-for-profits, the funding is the most important part of the award. But for a new grant awarded to two Indiana counties by Columbus-based CivicLab, information is the real prize.
Thanks to funding from Wisconsin-based Ascendium Education Group and ECMC Foundation in Los Angeles, CivicLab recently launched a three-year incubator designed to improve quality of life in rural areas by focusing on education and workforce issues.
Education not-for-profits in Bartholomew and Jay counties were two out of 10 areas nationwide that were selected to be a part of the initiative.
The $2.6 million in total grant money is mostly going toward covering the cost of transportation for two in-person conferences a year among the 10 communities as they learn from each other on how to navigate the future of their regions.
Rusty Inman is the executive director of the John Jay Center for Learning in Portland, Indiana. The John Jay Center, like most of the grant recipients, works with local schools and employers to provide programming and job training to help residents find work. Inman said Jay County is struggling with a declining population and is trying to increase internet connectivity for area farmers, among other challenges.
Even though the consortium has only met once in-person so far, Inman said he was grateful to share experiences with the other communities and learn that many are facing similar struggles.
“It’s been good to know there are others out there,” Inman said. “We wanted to find peers of our own and just never really found any. Well, we went to this meeting and found 10 peers who are all doing similar work. It’s been validating in a few different ways.”
In addition to picking the brains of education organizations from around the country, participants gain access to CivicLabs’ methodology and its census data, which Inman said is also helpful, especially with a rapidly growing Latino population in Jay County.
The other not-for-profit from Indiana selected to join the program is the Community Education Coalition (CEC) in Columbus. CivicLab is actually an arm within the CEC, but Director of Strategy and Development Veronica Franzese said CivicLab’s selection committee operated completely independently when awarding the grants.
The CEC manages the Air Park Campus in Columbus and supports multiple community partners ranging from school districts to local manufacturers. Franzese said the CEC has already been working to figure out what the future holds in Bartholomew County with changing technologies in area manufacturing and fewer students going to college. The CivicLab-led consortium coincides neatly with that initiative as the area looks ahead.
“Really what we outlined is we’re here to develop a roadmap,” Franzese said. “Leaning into the future and looking proactively at what might be coming up the pipe.”
CEC Vice President Jim Roberts added that it’s good to hear perspectives from across the country, though it’s helpful that four of the 10 grant participants are from Indiana and Ohio. Roberts said there are plans in the works for those four community organizations to collaborate more independently of the grant as well.
“People can give you money that seems to go toward a specific thing,” Roberts said. “In this case, we’re leveraging grant dollars to improve our system. The way in which we work, the way we approach our businesses and the way we make this work known in our community.”
The full list of grant recipients is:
- Berkeley County, S.C.—Convening Organization: Berkeley Chamber Educational Outreach
- Bartholomew County, Ind.—Convening Organization: Columbus Learning Center Management Corp.
- Tehama County, Calif.—Convening Organization: Expect More Tehama
- Southwest Florida—Convening Organization: Collaboratory
- Independence County, Ark.—Convening Organization: IMPACT Independence
- Jay County, Ind.—Convening Organization: John Jay Center for Learning
- Southeast Ohio—Convening Organization: Building Bridges to Careers, Inc.
- Anston & Union Counties, N.C.—Convening Organization: Wingate University
- Tuscarawas County, Ohio—Convening Organization: Tuscarawas County Economic Development Corp.
- Western & Central Montana—Convening Organization: University of Montana