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This is my favorite finding from our latest Survey of Rural Challenges: rural people are optimistic about the future of their community. In fact, they were twice as likely to say they were optimistic than negative about their community’s future! Over 300 rural people answered the question, Do you think your community will be better…
8 years ago, I asked Deb Brown if she would like to do something together for small towns. Deb was a full time Chamber of Commerce director, and I had my liquor store and cattle ranch. We started by making email courses and picked the name, SaveYour.Town. Fast forward through 8 years of experiments, and…
Your friends and fellow newsletter readers Sue, Julie and Marieta shared how they’re getting more food to the people having the hardest time affording it right now. We told you about Julie Kent, the librarian from Erie, Kansas. In 2020 the library shared seeds and plants and support. Here’s her latest update: We continue to…
I’m not much of a gardener, but in 2020, I planted a heck of a garden because I wanted to share some with my community. I knew that pandemic shortages combined with lost wages pushed many families into hunger. I gave bunches of lettuce and peppers to a friend who was raising her twin 4-year-old…
When Deb first told me about The Tour of Empty Buildings, I thought it was brilliant. Here’s how it started. In her first week on the job as Chamber Director, she got asked:“What are YOU going to do to fill those empty buildings?” And she said:“WE are going to hold a tour and show them off.”…
In our Placemaking Your Parks, Trails and Waters video, we talk about making more of the outdoor spaces you already have. I told how we used a bunch of empty lots in a floodplain to create a whole new park area on the cheap. Carol Peterson shared her own “hidden asset story” with us: Milnor…
I’m Becky McCray from Oklahoma. I co-founded SaveYour.Town with Deb Brown. Deb used to live in Iowa, but just moved to Mississippi. That meant I had to update our SaveYour.Town “about us” page. Now seems like a good time to share more about who we are, really. We are part of our communities, just like…
Deb Brown just told me that “cohort based learning” is trending according to Trends.co. They said learning in a group leads to 80-90% higher completion rates than learning alone. I’ve seen similar numbers before. So if you want people in your town to learn more about the Idea Friendly Method or any topic at all, start a…
When I share the Survey of Rural Challenges with people, about half the time someone will ask, “How do you define rural?” I don’t. I let you decide if you’re rural. Whether you live in the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK or another country, we all face some common challenges. In those different countries, different states…
Back during the spring of 2020 in Irvine, Kentucky, for awhile most everything was closed and folks were staying home as much as possible. Your community too, probably. Remember those feelings of uncertainty and isolation, maybe loneliness? That’s what they felt in Irvine, too. Then somebody went up the hill and turned on the star….
In August, I was planning on visiting and presenting in local communities for the group What’s Next, East Kentucky?! Then awful flooding disrupted their lives and communities. In September, the Brushy Fork Leadership Institute invited me to their Leadership Summit in nearby Berea, Kentucky, to address flooding, disasters and recovery, and maybe resilience, too. They…
Whether you divide up one big building into lots of small retailers or you stack up some sheds to build a tiny business incubator, I love shared retail spaces. They generate prosperity for rural areas and small towns when they: give small business ideas an affordable foothold create experiences that draw customers in build on…
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