What does a community do to keep
and attract young people and families? According to presenters at the Regards to Rural
conference, growing local entrepreneurs is a major ingredient in the successful recipe.
(An entrepreneur is someone who establishes a new business to offer a new or existing
product or service into a new or existing market.)
Lincoln County, Oregon, has an Entrepreneurship Development System
(EDS.) The system has two parts: (1) creating a pipeline of entrepreneurs; and (2)
enhancing business services for entrepreneurs. LC-CORE (Lincoln County –Connecting
Oregon for Rural Entrepreneurship) is a local advisory committee that has created a plan
to grow its own entrepreneurs consisting of 4 Cornerstones: Youth entrepreneurship, Adult
Education, Incubators Without Walls and Social Enterprise.
The pipeline starts with education from kindergarten through college.
In addition to students, education in youth entrepreneurship includes teaching parents,
educators, administrators and community members. The existing youth program and student
operated business offered at Waldport High School receives great community support.
http://www.whskayakshack.com/ Experiences from
the program are documented and used to establish “best practices” for
replication in other youth programs.
Lincoln County uses the National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship (NFTE) http://www.nfte.com/ and Real Entrepreneurship through Action
Learning (REAL) http://www.cfed.org/ curriculums. There are other curriculums and programs
such as YoungBiz http://www.kidsway.com/ and
Empowering Business Spirit (EBS) http://www.bizport.org/ .
On the adult level, Lincoln County is working on establishing a two
year AS/AA Degree in entrepreneurship education and a 1 year certificate program. Oregon Coast
Community College has also developed a series of courses, lectures and services. http://www.occc.cc.or.us/sbdc/ Some of these
appear to be similar to those offered locally in Siskiyou County by JEDI (Jefferson
Economic Development Institute.) http://www.e-jedi.org/
Lincoln County has many social and economic structures that form its
“business incubator without walls.” These include Farmers’ Markets and art
groups. LC-CORE assists by helping to coordinate their efforts and to increase markets for
value-added agricultural projects and arts and crafts. Resources have been found to assist
business people in selling products outside of the county, providing marketing materials
and distribution systems to increase sales and market share. (Siskiyou County has its own
commercial food kitchen, Pacific West FoodWorks and Business Incubator Center housed in
the Economic Development Council building in Yreka. http://www.siskiyoucounty.org/ )
There are, apparently, also some “warm-handoff” programs to
encourage retiring business owners to sell their businesses to local (young) folks. The
seller, bank and community provide mentorship and support services to make the handoff
successful.
Financial sustainability is a challenge for non-profit programs such
as our local Family Resource Centers, Hospice, etc. In Lincoln County, LC-CORE helps
non-profits identify and set up viable businesses to create a funding base. This is called
“Social Enterprise.”
Although Siskiyou County has some of the same elements as Lincoln County,
there does not seem to be a focused effort here to bring together all the organizations,
county government and policies to specifically support entrepreneurs. Perhaps it is time.
|
