To help foster an entrepreneurial mindset within rural Nebraska, Rural Prosperity Nebraska Extension Educator, Shawn Kaskie leads the eCommunities program, funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration, which focuses on helping communities identify, collect and cultivate resources that encourage entrepreneurship within their towns. He’s working with three entrepreneurial coaches (eCoaches) in twenty communities.
The eCommunities program follows an outline aimed at getting people to start thinking about what success looks like in their towns. It begins with conversations among community-selected steering committee members who focus on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of their entrepreneurial climates.
In Grand Island “we hadn’t created, fostered, grown, supported (the entrepreneurship) area of our business development for years,” said Cindy Johnson, a member of Grand Island’s committee and the Chamber of Commerce. “We’re a community that was founded by entrepreneurs, but there was a gap.”
These discussions lead communities to the next step in the process, creating goals and action plans to bolster the strengths and build up areas that may be lacking. While the program follows an outline, the results so far have varied city to city — exactly as it was designed to.
To date, 129 eCommunities-supported businesses have added 69 full-time jobs and 59 part-time jobs, and increased revenues by more than $2.5 million.
“Entrepreneur-led development builds community capacity for entrepreneurs and community development. Human talent is the building block of today’s successful economies and communities,” said Kaskie.
Learn more about eCommunities: https://ruralprosperityne.unl.edu/ecommunities/
University of Nebraska Extension: https://extension.unl.edu/