Charting the future of millville: envisioning and executing change
Local Citizens of Millville formed the Millville Community Alliance as a way to document their community's needs and foster projects for change. This demonstration of initiative made the community a prime candidate for the Cooperative Extension's Charting Our Future: Community-Visioning Program.
The Extension program is designed to assist eligible communities in examining their attributes to form actions plans and plot a successful course for the future. The Millville Alliance worked with Extension over the course of 4 sessions running from July through August to offer community leaders and citizens a forum for analyzing and undertaking community needs.
During the first session participants examined community and survey data and shared their thoughts on a vision for Millville. Extension Educators found common trends in the discussion and used them to facilitate a group analysis of the community. For each subsequent 3-hour session the group revisited points from previous meetings and then addressed steps of the community-visioning program that would take them through goal development, prioritization and action plans.
The Millville group examined community interdependencies, resources and assets to create a common vision statement tailored to address the needs and concerns of individuals, small and large groups within the community. The participants and facilitators prioritized goals for the community and formed teams with defined roles and targets. Some examples of these action plans are to maintain and improve community aesthetics, to encourage historic preservation and to improve media and web site utilization for advertising community events.
Each team was responsible for drawing up an action report. The teams will work on fund raising, cooperating with outside entities such as DCNR and civic clubs, reviewing codes, conducting studies and educating the public. To continue encouraging involvement some of the plans call for monthly meetings with existing community organizations. An accountability plan has been established to keep each team on course and leaders from all teams will report to a Leadership Team every 6 months to discuss achievements and progress.
The Millville community's involvement and the teams' commitment to their goals is a promising start to successful actualization of Millville's goals.
For more information about The Charting Our Future: Community Visioning Program please visit http://www.visioning.aers.psu.edu or contact Neal Fogle at nef3@psu.edu or (570) 837-4252.
by Mish Rodgers
