Summary: In difficult economic times, as our country and much of the world has undergone in the last several years, it’s tempting for leaders to want to bail their public out of distress as quickly as possible - even if it means turning a blind eye to long term ramifications of those actions. There is an urgency that leaders at the top feel to facilitate growth and recovery through new programs, incentives, and initiatives. The clear and continuous problem with this, however, is that these new initiatives cease with each new incumbent and the subsequent regime change in staff and policies. And the result is a constant reinvention of programs and policies telling people, in a trickle down fashion, what to go do to fix their communities, education systems, healthcare systems, etc, etc, etc. What we at Birth2Work know, however, is that the real future for sustainable economic growth in every community is going to be how they reconnect with their own local leadership and not look to the state or national level to tell them what to go do. Birth2Work is about facilitating and aligning community stakeholder leaders from the six sectors of the economy – business, government, media, education, health and non-profit - to go create places where people not only want to live and work, but continue to learn, and create healthy families. Our Birth2Work Radio guest on this program is Jeff Finkle, a recognized leader and international authority on economic development. As President and CEO of the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), the world’s largest economic development membership organization, he contributes his expertise on community revitalization, business development and job creation to projects nationwide. Of the many things we cover in this program, one of the primary issues is a sea change in perspective from community economic developers across the country. The shift is marked and significant, in that developers have shifted their goals from years past, when the thinking was that bringing in large manufacturers was the basis for sustainable economic growth, to looking inward and supporting entrepreneurial vision at the local level. Whereas manufacturing jobs have, in the last several generations, created enormous swaths of dying towns in the “Rust Belt” of our country due to international outsourcing, local entrepreneurs tend to work smaller and hire locally. And although as citizens we inherently recognize this as a positive thing, local leadership has done a poor job in the recent past of reinforcing the necessity of buying locally and supporting local businesses. It’s true, too, though, that local manufacturers and businesses have to be supported by the entire community in which they set up. They need community infrastructure that supports them not only through local government and business incentives for operation, but with the promise of a workforce that is well educated and a community where those entrepreneurs want to live and raise their families. And therein lies the jaw dropping question of the decade, how do currently suffering communities recover to become the successful and sustainable communities of the future? Birth2Work has the process. Our six step process of facilitation, aligning community stakeholder leaders to identify a common vision, common language, and measures of success enables whole communities to write their own success stories. In the end, community economic development requires a national perspective, but local decision making. For no matter the number of “friends” you have in cyberspace, it’s your immediate neighbors you’ll rely on to pull you out of the rubbish in an emergency. From car repair to health care, it’s the local community that organically supports each of us to live healthy, happy, sustainable lives - Elane V. Scott www.Birth2Work.org
