WV Cultivate sunsets on the City of Fairmont
FAIRMONT — With The West Virginia Community Development Hub's direct involvement now at an end, it's now on Cultivate-Fairmont participants to keep pushing forward.
Cultivate-Fairmont met one last time with its mini-grant awardees Thursday evening. Cultivate had $40,000 in mini-grants to hand out, in the end Fairmont produced 24 different projects to enrich the community. The group met to go over the progress from the past year and hear advice on how to keep their projects and community involvement alive now that the organization responsible for bringing the Fairmont community together is departing and heading to another town that needs them.
'It has been fantastic,' Tom Jackson, treasurer of Fairmont Pride, said. 'The best part for me is hearing feedback from other communities, what happened there, and seeing pictures of how it went from this to this. Also, the way the funds were creatively used. It makes me want to go to those towns that this happens in and visit just to see it.'
Fairmont Pride's is using its mini-grant to purchase what he called evergreen items such as tents, banners and outdoor oversized games. Those would not only be used during Fairmont Pride events this year, but would also function as a repository for useful outdoor equipment for any other community group who needs it for their own event as well.
The City of Fairmont applied for the Cultivate WV program last May as a way to also expand the number of people who engage in community development. While there is a core of active residents who make it a point to do their part in civil society, the city also wanted to expand that core group and bring in new faces. City Assistant Planner Erin Hager said the program, from that standpoint, was a success. In total, 144 people engaged with Cultivate throughout the year in one way or other.
Olivia McConnell, Cultivate community coaching assistant, said aside from funding 24 projects with $40,000 in grant funds, Fairmont also received an additional $19,000 in matching funds. Predevelopment for one long term project brought in $10,000 in pre-development funding. In total, the Fairmont community will receive $69,000 in funding.
The benefits of the program became apparent in real time after one person made a request for volunteers for a project.
'The Clean up Marion County project, someone said like, how are you going to get volunteers and like five different people raised their hands and said, you could do this, you could do that. It's just been really cool to see folks make the connections themselves,' Hager said.
City Manager Travis Blosser said the city is considering picking up where Cultivate left off. For starters, the city wants to keep the monthly meetings going. They're also figuring out if they can move enough pieces to get minigrant funding to fit into the city budget. The idea is but a glimmer in city staffer's eyes, but they are thinking about how to do it, Blosser said. He added what the city could to make available funding wise that may not be the size or scope of the Cultivate grants, so the city would have to be selective.
But also, mini-grant funded projects could be a really good way to gauge what kind of investments the community wants to see in their neighborhoods.
'The young lady who is looking at having a little community library, that could be something that gets invested in and then goes gangbusters,' Blosser said. 'And we hear from people who are like, 'well, I want one in my community.' That would move us to look at investing in those areas. That tells us as a city, our constituents want this.'
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