News Article: March 13
3/13/99
Small Town Project Training Highlights
by Elizabeth Hunter
An oral historian and a documentary photographer will be visiting Western North Carolina communities involved in HandMade in America’s Small Towns Project this spring to find out how they have come together to tackle issues affecting their hometowns.
The visits are a result of the Small Towns Project’s selection as one of 12 “case studies” to be included in “Wanted: Solutions for America,” a three-year project funded by the Pew Partnership for Social Change, said HandMade executive director Becky Anderson.
Pew’s study will showcase communities “from the Florida Everglades to northern Alaska. Western North Carolina is one of them,” said Jeff Whetstone, a Chattanooga, TN, oral historian hired by the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies to document the Small Towns Project for “Solutions.”
Whetstone spent March 12, his first day on the job, at the last in a series of eight Leadership Development Initiative (LDI) training sessions HandMade and the North Carolina Institute of Government have co-sponsored during the last year to help residents of Andrews, Bakersville, Chimney Rock, Mars Hill, Robbinsville, and West Jefferson organize, plan, implement and “grow” projects aimed at revitalizing their communities.
Whetstone plans to visit all the communities involved in the Small Towns Project, including the communities (Bryson City, Hayesville, Dillsboro, Marshall, Crossnore, Jefferson and Todd) joining the project this year. But the final case study will focus on “one or two” places, he said.
The end result will include several components: a “200-plus page book,” a “CD with voices,” and a photo/voice exhibit. In addition, the communities upon which the study focuses will receive a permanent exhibit for installation at the place of their choice, he said.
“Growing a project” including celebrating a completed task and building your team to include new people for the next community effort — provided an appropriate ending for the series of training sessions because revitalizing a community is an on-going process, the Institute of Government’s Anne Davidson explained.
The “grow” step “is often skipped — except by towns that are really successful,” she said. Yet it’s important, because “if you evaluate the process you’ve just gone through, you can use that evaluation to generate funding for future projects. It gives you a chance to brag a little — to have a little fun. And if you don’t start thinking about how to train others, you will drop in your tracks.”
So how, exactly, do you go about building effective teams, avoiding burnout, maintaining a high energy level? Providing some answers to those questions was J. Mark Wilson, resource coordinator for the Great River Development Corporation in West Kentucky, who led lively morning and afternoon sessions on effective team-building that began with a pile of lumber on the floor.
Clad in a sweater, jeans, and cowboy boots — the better to illustrate a point about not boxing in your thinking by making the “ordinary assumptions” (that training sessions should be led by someone wearing a suit, for instance) — Wilson distributed the boards to trainees.
As he reviewed the “foundational features” of team building (trust, talent, and technique), and its “philosophical pillars” (realization of individuality, recognition of stated mission, resilience in difficulty, resolve to complete the task, and rest at its conclusion), the once haphazardly-piled wood was reorganized into a building, with foundation, supports, and roof.
In an exercise illustrating three kinds of team members, Bakersville’s Bob Hensley tried to toss grapes into a plastic cup. A “complacent” team member leaves the cup on the floor. The “contrary” member picks the cup up — and dodges the tossed grapes. The “cooperative” member moves the cup to catch the grapes, no matter how off the mark the throw.
Attending a Small Towns Project session for the first time was Joe Morgan of Todd. Owner of the Todd General Store, unofficial “mayor” of the unincorporated community and founder of its active Ruritan Club. “There’s a sense of community in Todd that can’t be beat,” said consultant Mikki Sager, who introduced Morgan. One of Todd’s goals is to get the buildings in the heart of the community registered as a National Historic District.
Todd residents “have been watching the way the Small Towns Project has helped West Jefferson. We know what can be accomplished, and look forward to our resource team visit on April 5 and 6,” Morgan said.
Also attending her first meeting was Pat Cabe, who will administer the Small Towns Project for HandMade. Cabe joined the HandMade staff on Feb. 1 as head of its Community Development Corporation.