By Miles Flynn | Southern Indiana Business Report
BIRDSEYE — A celebration Monday, Aug. 9, at Patoka Lake Winery will officially mark the recognition of the Southern Indiana Gateway 21st Century Talent Region by the state. Members of the public are invited to attend in order to learn more about how the effort is expected to impact the region and how they can help. Hours for the event are 2-4 p.m. EDT. Rep. Stephen Bartels, R-Eckerty, will act as the state official confirming the designation by the Indiana Office of Secretary of Career Connections and Talent for the region including Orange, Crawford, Dubois, Perry, Spencer and Pike counties.
What does the designation mean?
The Southern Indiana Gateway will be Indiana’s 13th region to earn designation under a program that was launched by the state in 2017 to encourage communities to work together across the public and private sectors in order to attract, develop and connect talent. It’s up to the people of the regions themselves to organize, identify local priorities, determine action steps, and work to achieve those goals. In the Southern Indiana Gateway’s case, extensive meetings and workshops with local stakeholders distilled five major areas for action:
- increasing regional population 15% by 2026 by providing the necessary housing and broadband infrastructure to build capacity.
- growing the certified skills of the population 20% through programs with regional workforce boards and innovation with community colleges and universities.
- raising the number of high school graduates with stackable credentials and/or certificates by 20% by 2026.
- increasing employer engagement with the education and workforce systems in high-demand industry sectors, to be measured by increasing the number of internship or apprenticeship opportunities available to youth and adults by 10% each year.
- raising collective assessed value by 5% and investing in marketing the talent region for population growth through partnerships with civic groups and elected leadership.
An effort two years in the making
Becky Hickman, executive director of the Dubois County Chamber of Commerce, serves as the co-leader of the Southern Indiana Gateway project, along with Kathy Reinke, executive director of the Spencer County Regional Chamber of Commerce. They make a good team, Hickman said — Reinke has the contacts in the region and Hickman brings experience in processes from her many years in corporate leadership. However, Hickman credits Brenda Stallings of the Jasper-based firm Matrix Integration with providing the initial spark that got the entire initiative rolling way back in 2019.
At the time, Stallings was meeting with several community members in Dubois County to push for collaboration on an entrepreneurship pipeline for that would help nurture new businesses as well as ensure better alignment between local workforce development training and he actual needs of area businesses.
To get started, Hickman and Stallings went to CivicLab, a Columbus-based non-profit organization dedicated to advancing civic collaboration. The duo learned more about a stakeholder engagement process to help their effort. They also found out more about the 21st Century Talent Region program and that neighboring Spencer County had expressed interest in it. At that point, what had been seen as a local project took on a regional scope.
Conversations began with neighboring counties, and representatives from the six counties that were interested determined they were all facing many of the same challenges. “It felt very comfortable for the six counties to say, ‘Hey, let’s join forces and see how we can make a regional difference,’” Hickman shared.
Meetings have followed every month since, with 10 committee members reporting back on concerns and ideas from workshops with a wide range of residents, employers, educators and other stakeholders in their own communities. (Along with Hickman, Stallings and Reinke, other committee members are Ashley Willis, Pike County Economic Development Corporation executive director; Jill Hyneman, Pike County Chamber of Commerce executive director; Wendi Rich, Perry County Chamber of Commerce executive director; Erin Emerson, Perry County Development Corporation executive director; Kristal Painter, Orange County Economic Development Partnership executive director; Michael Thissen, Crawford County Economic Development Corporation executive director; and Valerie Schmidt, Lincolnland Economic Development Corporation executive director.)
Taking the next steps
The many months of planning are over, and the list of priorities has been developed. But committee members know the effort is just getting started. “Really, this is where the hard work begins,” Hickman said.
While the numbers and timeline created are aggressive, she said, the committee members are confident in their communities’ ability to pull together and make it happen. They see the collaboration as the key to success. “We feel there’s strength in the regional model,” Hickman commented.
The idea is that rather than tackling all aspects of the initiative simultaneously in all parts of the region, various locales can concentrate on separate pieces. The belief is that once a successful plan of attack is found in one place, it can easily be replicated in other parts of the region without the need for reinventing the wheel.
In fact, some pieces of the overall plan are already underway in parts of the region. A couple of examples are the digital inclusion program that’s a priority of Dubois Strong, the local economic development office, and the housing program in Orange County that’s being spearheaded by Painter at the local economic development office and by Cook Group, parent company of French Lick Resort. (In the latter program, Cook Group was one of four organizations around the state securing a $1 million grant in 2019 from the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority and matching it with its own land and other resources to create what amounts to a revolving loan fund to build homes, allow people working in Orange County to buy them, and then reinvesting that money into further home construction.)
There are still two big needs, though: funding and people. The organizers believe the network they’ve built already and the designation earned as a 21st Century Talent Region will go a long way in helping them secure grant funding for various components of the initiative. One potentially huge piece of assistance could be the state’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative. (The READI program is offering $500 million in state money to help local communities work together regionally on retaining today’s talent and attracting tomorrow’s workforce. Thanks to a 30-day extension, the program is still accepting regional plan submissions through Sept. 30.)
For the second need — the people — the celebration itself is seen as a recruiting tool to get more folks involved with lending a hand.
To RSVP for the celebration
Pre-registration is required for the Aug. 9 gathering and can be completed by contacting Hickman by email at [email protected] or calling 812-827-8274. Deadline is Friday, Aug. 6.
People who can’t attend, but who would like to learn more about the Southern Indiana Gateway 21st Century Talent Region, are encouraged to contact any of the organizations represented on the committee.
“I think the excitement will only continue to build as we work with our partners in the community and see the results of the initiative,” Hickman concluded.