Next Generation Initiative Update

HURLEY, WI - Thursday, December 3, 2009 - All four work-groups of the Gogebic Range Next Generation Initiative (NGI) continue to meet and our making headway towards their goals. It’s exciting to see that all four work-groups are still active and working on ways to retain and attract young people in order to help grow our community. Shortly after the new year, we will bring all NGI participants (and other interested parties) back for another public program. In the meantime, I thought it would be helpful to give you a quick update on the work-group activities to date.

Attract Young Workers by Strengthening Our Niche – The focus of this group is to strengthen our outdoor nature-based recreation niche in two ways: create a vision for a regional trail system connecting the five cities (Montreal to Wakefield) and selling this vision to local/county governments for inclusion in their plans and grant writing activities; and 2) enhance awareness regarding the economic importance of the niche in order to create broad-based support for the above. This workgroup has created two sub-committees who are reaching out to the community regarding these two goals.

Attract Young Workers by Promoting Our Strengths – This group is focusing on promoting the many assets we have going for us already, primarily our nature-based outdoor recreation niche and other community-based assets such as safety, affordability and a great place to raise a family. They are in the process of working with a professional web-designer to create a web-site called “Beautiful Northwoods Adventure” promoting our assets and strengths. Once the web-is developed, the work-group will create promotional materials to connect our target market to this new web-site.

Retain Students by Better Connecting Them to the Community – This group is focusing on connecting youth to the assets of the community and making them feel more connected to the community. They are currently organizing a nature photography project with both high school and college students. They are also collaborating with area youth-service organizations to better connect our young people to the community, for example through service learning, youth-in-governance and mentoring.

Retain Young Workers by Building Social Capital – This is the “Go-In Forward Next Generation” group. Their purpose is to provide social and networking opportunities for young people. They have already offered a variety of successful socials, activities and community projects.

Attached, you will find our NGI promotional brochure. For more details on the initiative, you can go to my web-site at: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/cty/iron/cnred/index.html

Please help spread the word about the positive actions of these four work-groups and help keep this momentum going forward by recruiting new people to join this important effort.

If you have any questions or would like any additional information, please feel free to respond.

Thanks,

Will Andresen, AICP
Community Resource Development Educator
Iron County UW-Extension
300 Taconite Street
Hurley, WI 54534
715-561-2695
888-561-2695 (toll free from Mercer and Springstead)
715-561-2704 (fax)
http://www.uwex.edu/ces/cty/iron/cnred/index.html