15-02-2025
CREATE program looks to expand regionwide
Today, there are a number of Communities of Excellence recognized and encouraged by CREATE throughout the region. In their annual meeting Friday, members were challenged to help ensure each of the 17 counties in the Northeast Mississippi area finish the year with a Community of Excellence program at least started if not fully in place and rolling.
These programs are nothing more than groups of citizens local to each locale who are engaged and determined to see their home regions thrive. Together they select business and quality-of-life sectors in need of improvement, then do their dead-level best, through networking, leverage and simple hard work, to see they get improved.
In each case, the business leaders are doing their best simply to be good citizens.
'We're working to create an improved quality of life for our communities,' said B.J. Canup, whose family business, Tremont Floral in Itawamba County, employs more than 50 people. Though his business is an international concern, he feels it a simple obligation of citizenship to work for the overall betterment of the Northeast Mississippi region. 'I try to look at what community business leaders are supposed to do. If we're not concerned about the local quality of life, who will be? Who will help? Those of us who can, should.'
The Community of Excellence program is a product of the CREATE-sponsored Commission on the Future of Northeast Mississippi, which was founded in 1995 and celebrates 30 years of accomplishment this year. Since 1995, the group has been working to build regional cooperation and unity, helping old lines of division fade for the benefit of everyone involved. Together, committee members have tackled local issues including affordable housing, economic revitalization, high school attendance and drop-out concerns, school-to-work issues and much more.
This committee, through CREATE, was a bellwether for sagging high school graduation rates in fact, and has been a leader state- and nationwide in the introduction of career coaches to high schools. These career coaches go much further in their aid to students than guidance counselors have the capacity to.
'We have the opportunity to meet a wide range of students,' said Noah Bass, a career coach in the Tupelo school system. 'We meet them where they are and guide them on a path to what they want to do, whether that is to go directly into the workforce, to college, to further career technical education or wherever they hope to be.'
Career coaches have proven to be an indispensable bridge between dreams and reality, in fact.
'Every student is unique, and we're dedicated to pinpointing what we can do to help them get where they want to go,' Bass said. 'We help them learn soft skills and practice in mock interviews, we help connect them with appropriate financial aid and do everything we can to set them out on their best start in life.
'As career coaches, we do a lot of relationship building, with students, with industries, with business partners as well as with other schools and colleges. We pull information and opportunities from one another to help the students.'
That help has proven an invaluable aid to the region along the way. Community excellence has been achieved through the work of these committees in many other sectors as well, from tackling downtown beautification to improving business recruitment and workforce retention, to addressing brain-drain, solving shortcomings in local healthcare, facilitating highway construction and more.
'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. This is about empowering local people to act for their own benefit, for the improvement of their lives and their children's futures. 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.'
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.
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.
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.
