La Porte County Rural Summit

On Feb. 9, 2010 Leadership La Porte County and Purdue Extension-La Porte County are sponsoring our 3rd annual Rural Summit for our small, rural communities.  We invite only our 14 rural communities to attend an all-day seminar to learn, network, and do strategic planning.  The morning session is devoted to providing useful information for the communities, while the afternoon is spent around community tables with each community strategically looking at how to improve their unique situation.  This year Chancellor Jim Dworkin from Purdue North Central is facilitating a session around the concepts in the book "Caught in the Middle" by Richard Longworth.  In the afternoon Scott Hutcheson from the Purdue Center for Regional Development will introduce the concept of "strategic doing" and start the communities toward a system of achieving a specific goal for each community.  Over the following year the communities will be challenged to follow the steps of "strategic doing" to accomplish their goal.  Challenge grants will be awarded by the Unity Foundation (local community foundation) to those communities who do exceptional work on their project.  Each community can invite a team of 6 to 10 individuals to participate.  Over 100 attendees are expected this year.  Other partners in the summit are the local office of the USDA, the county economic development office, Purdue Extension, the Unity Foundation,  Leadership La Porte County, the Purdue Center for Regional Development, and Purdue North Central.  A local HELP team will assist the communities with their development challenges.  For more information on our Rural Summit contact Jim Jessup at 219-325-8223 or jim@leadershiplaportecounty.com.