CREATE’s Communities of Excellence Program Driving Improvement Throughout Region
Jun 1, 2024
by: Kevin Tate, Daily Journal
Communities can’t be forced to hit their own major issues head on, but helping them do so with as much support as they’d like to have is setting Northeast Mississippi apart.
Communities come into existence organically. Families live side by side. Children share the same schools. Adults work in complementary industries and businesses. They go to the same churches and share the same common concerns. To a large extent, each community and municipality deals with the issues that face them on a day-to-day basis, but often that work is largely reactive in nature. Beyond a certain point, growth and development have to be addressed deliberately.
Genuine, long-term progress usually demands a considerable amount of proactive labor. That involves planning, relationship-building and a level of trust both deep and broad. Challenges unique to any location have to be tackled by dedicated, concerned citizens and pressed in a long-term way if conditions are going to improve and stay that way. That’s where the CREATE Foundation’s Communities of Excellence program comes in.
Since 1995, CREATE’s Commission on the Future of Northeast Mississippi has been working to build regional cooperation and unity, helping old lines of division fade for the benefit of everyone involved.
Fifty-five leaders from 17 counties have been working together on regional community development issues for 29 years.
Intentional conversations, research and collaborations were begun. Over time, they developed focal areas of leadership development, racial reconciliation, broadband access, highway development and educational attainment. Progress was well underway in these areas when, roughly 15 years ago, leaders from the Alcorn County area challenged CREATE to take matters a few steps further and help them set up a unique organization in their local community, the better to help them work toward their own precise concerns. That was such a good idea, CREATE people thought, it was worth expanding to any community willing to give it a try.
Today, there are six Communities of Excellence recognized and encouraged by CREATE throughout the region. Citizen-led, community organizations in Alcorn, Chickasaw, Lowndes, Pontotoc, Tippah and Union Counties have been working on local concerns specific to them while accessing the regional strength of CREATE and its consensus-building potential. In 2022, CREATE recruited four key partners to help support the mission: the Appalachian Regional Commission, Mississippi State University, the University of Mississippi and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
This summer, the Daily Journal will explore the goals and progress of each of these groups in a series of regularly-appearing weekend features.
What these groups are accomplishing fits perfectly within the wishes of George and Anna Keirsey McLean, founders of CREATE and key visionaries behind the vitality and successful growth and development of Northeast Mississippi. In each case, just as it once was with Tupelo long ago, the Communities of Excellence program is careful to keep each group’s energy and direction entirely in the hands of residents who call those communities home.
“In each case, this is each community’s initiative,” said Lewis Whitfield, coordinator of the program for CREATE. “We and our partners are here to help in any way we can, but we’re not in charge. We’re walking alongside them.”
Local leaders founding a Community of Excellence group follow a process that helps them identify what issues are most relevant to their own citizens. Key community leaders gather, form a steering committee and hold a community forum. At that forum, attendees identify the issues they find most pressing. The group then establishes task forces to identify key issues, then the group sets about implementing the recommendations.
“This is about empowering local people to act for their own benefit, for the improvement of their lives and their children’s futures,” Whitfield said. “We need someone in each community with an organization to be the anchor and organize the meetings, connect with the right people and keep things moving forward.”
Progress in each community has been impressive. Upcoming features in the Daily Journal will look at how those in the Alcorn area have worked to address brain drain, how Lowndes Countians are tackling needs for early childhood education and how both Tippah and Chickasaw Counties have made great strides in advancing local healthcare. We’ll see how Tippah County is changing its economic development landscape through highway construction, and how both Union and Pontotoc Counties are tackling the need for more affordable housing.
“The Commission on the Future of Northeast Mississippi has been in existence 28 years,” Whitfield said. “It’s created so many opportunities for unique, local issues to emerge and be addressed. We’re so pleased to be able to do things from an overall standpoint to help build unity and cooperation that, in turn, builds and improves our communities.
“I believe there is a good energy about the people involved. They’re persistent in following the structures they’ve set up, and that’s important, because long-term stability is indispensable for accomplishing things this way. If you think about most of the issues we face throughout the state and the region, they’re all long term. If low income is one of the key contributors, the main solution is educational attainment, and that takes a long time to see through to fruition at every level.
“The ultimate thing is keeping each community involved in its own future. These groups should be a great cross-section of people from government, business and volunteers, representing all age groups and complete diversity.
“This is their initiative, and I can’t stress that enough. If they need us, we’re always there for them but, otherwise, it’s their game. That’s the most important of all the key points.”