Community found to have ‘character’

“This community and the leadership in this community and a lot of the people in this room are doing some wonderful things.”

That’s what Melissa Lu of the University System of Georgia’s Archway Partnership told members of the Kiwanis Club of Dalton Monday.

Lu and the Archway Partnership have been in Dalton for two-and-a-half years. She said accomplishments are many, but what she has learned about our community impresses her more.

“Accomplishments are time limited and circumstance limited and eventually that list will become stale,” she said.

“I would argue that there are a number of highly successful communities that attract and retain generation after generation of successful leaders,” she added.

The University of Georgia journalism school and William & Mary law school graduate believes it all boils down to “character.” And she believes our community has character.

“If you had asked me two years ago if I believed that a community can have character I would have said definitely not,” she said. “I would have argued like a lawyer that people can have character, but not the communities as a whole. It’s really more of an individual thing. Now two years later and with a little bit more experience I would change my answer.

“What a community aspires to be and how it chooses to get there has a lot more to do with whether people choose to stay there and make it their home than any list of accomplishments can have.”

Lu told the Kiwanians that the Archway program typically goes to communities in crisis.

“It can be a good crisis or a bad crisis, but people are usually not motivated to come together unless there is something big that’s facing the community,” she said. “I think we all know that around 2008-2009 when the Archway discussions were happening our world was in crisis and still is, but certainly Dalton was facing some things it had never faced before. I want to tell you what that looked like to an outsider looking in. This was a career change for me. We rolled in and I was going to accomplish the world. We came in and people were very down. It was just a very down place to come to at first. And that’s typical. I guess the community was facing an identity crisis like it probably had never known in terms of at least the lifespan of most of the people in the community. It has always been extremely successful.”

Lu said such crises usually cause everyone to “hold their cards close to their vests.”

She praised local leaders for avoiding the temptation to take “quick wins.” Instead, leaders chose the more courageous path of “waiting for real success to happen.”

“I think we all know in America where food is fast and time is money that waiting in and of itself is an act of courage,” she said.

She reminded the Kiwanians that the partnership started with 14 work groups.

“These work groups had goals with doing everything from articulating the strengths and weaknesses of prenatal to pre-K to diversifying our economic base,” Lu said. “It was a very broad set of things that we were working on.

“One idea that circulated through a lot of our groups was this idea that our students in the area have no appreciation for the high-paying career paths that are available to them right here at home. Because of that they are taking course work that is not going to put them in a position later in life to transfer into this career path. We all in the community have a vested interest in keeping our best and brightest here at home. It’s great if they go elsewhere, but it’s double great for us if they stay here.”

Groups began examining ways for young people to be exposed to available local opportunities. Around April of last year a camp for middle school students was proposed.

In June, while Lu was on maternity leave, she read in the newspaper about the community hosting its “first ever design, engineering and manufacturing camp.”

The second camp finished two weeks ago.

“There were 40 students and they are doing wonderful things,” Lu said. The camp is for rising seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students.

She cited the recent announcement of plans to help area students get on track in grades kindergarten through three, the crucial years for learning to read at grade level. Numerous Kiwanis speakers over the years have touted the idea that students need to read at grade level by third grade. As noted, “You learn to read in kindergarten through third grade. After that, you read to learn.” That idea is a crucial part of the Archway K-12 Education Committee’s proposals.

Lu praised Kiwanians David Cook and Alex Stall for their work in helping to develop a young professionals organization. She said the original group had a loose structure. As a result, after a few good events the group “just stopped.”

A local address and breakout sessions with economist and author Rebecca Ryan seemed to inspire the two Kiwanians. Lu said Cook and Stall were instrumental in rejuvenating the members of the original group into a more structured Young Professionals of Northwest Georgia. The speaker said about 50 people were present at a young professionals social last week.

“That is something our community can really be proud of,” she added.

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Community found to have ‘character’

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