Stennis Institute to lead community workshop
Contact: Zack Plair
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擬ississippi State鈥檚 Stennis Institute of Government and Community Development is partnering with the University of North Alabama to spread a message of intracommunity cooperation.
The tandem will offer a StrategicDoing workshop at 9 a.m. Thursday [Feb. 4] at downtown Tupelo鈥檚 Renasant Center for Ideas. At the event, four teams 鈥 including civic leaders from Pontotoc, Poplarville, Aberdeen and Ashland/Holly Springs 鈥 will identify an opportunity in their respective communities, then develop a project and an action plan to cooperatively achieve it, said Joe Fratesi, project director for the Stennis Institute.
鈥淓ach project will be different, much like the communities themselves are different,鈥 he said.
Fratesi said communities鈥 goals for such things as economic development, crime reduction and tourism sometimes fail because members of their leadership networks (city and county governments, chambers of commerce, economic development boards, etc.) are often independent entities who don鈥檛 answer to each other. StrategicDoing, first developed by the Purdue Center for Regional Development in West Lafayette, Indiana, helps guide loosely-connected networks to collaborate quickly across organizational and political boundaries.
鈥淚t鈥檚 about linking and leveraging your assets to see what opportunities emerge,鈥 Fratesi said. 鈥淭hen they can develop measurable goals for how to address those opportunities.鈥
Fratesi said this is a pilot program he hopes will eventually spread to help public and private sector networks across Mississippi.
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