Rural Community Leadership program going strong

OTHELLO — Othello’s Rural Community Leadership Program, a program under the Elevate Othello umbrella, had its third session and second in-person session Nov. 30 at SkillSource’s Othello location and is going well, according to the program’s organizers.

The leadership program is led by Christine Gilmore, the leadership services business manager with Rural Development Initiatives, Inc., the organization in charge of partnering with local agencies to implement the Elevate Othello program.

“I think this program is going fantastic. We have such a diverse group of cohort members from diversity in age, diversity in economics, diversity in work, diversity in even just interest areas, so I think it's going really, really well. People seem to be enjoying it and learning and really taking it in,” Gilmore said. “What I'm loving about Othello in general is just this hunger for their community. Every place we go has this hunger to help their community, but it is just so evident in Othello and just the people here are so invested in what they're doing and what they want for their community.”

Gilmore elaborated on the purpose of the leadership program.

“So this is a part of the Elevato Othello program that is geared towards building the capacity of local people, and we have different programs that are part of it. This happens to be one of them,” she said. “It's about building the capacity of local people at the community level to be leaders. And we don't talk about leadership in a hierarchical sense, but more like, ‘What do you want to get done in your community and for your community?’”

Elevate Othello is funded through the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Placemaking Innovation Challenge grant. 

“RDI was awarded it based off our work and our collaborations in Othello, but it's Othello’s project,” Gilmore said. “This program is designed to build the capacity of people to work together to get stuff done for the community. We look at things like how to work in groups, how to deal with conflict, learned topics like appreciative inquiry, or tonight, we're doing asset mapping in the community; it's like, ‘What are the things that work well in this community?’”

Cohort member Kyle Niehenke, who is the executive director of the Adams County Development Council, which is a sponsor of Elevate Othello, also said the leadership program has been going well.

“It's very much how to be a leader within the community, so like how to get volunteers to do something, or how to be the voice of, ‘What does my community truly need someday from a people level?’” Niehenke said. “It's very much more geared to using people within your community and getting them to feel like they are important so that then you can actually do things as a community versus just relying on your city council or your government.”

    Rural Development Initiatives Leadership Services Business Manager and Rural Community Leadership Program Lead Trainer Christine Gilmore, standing right, speaks to Adams County Development Council Executive Director Kyle Niehenke, standing left, prior to the program’s Nov. 30 session.
  

Niehenke also spoke about having youth in the program.

“I think there's three that are in high school, maybe even four, and they're really bright young adults,” he said. “They want to be involved in Othello, they want to be leaders, which is cool because we don't have a lot of that demographic or age group who want to be as involved in their community. I mean, they obviously want to do something after high school and come back and get involved, which is cool.”

Both Gilmore and Niehenke said that the two main priorities the cohort members have identified as the potential projects to use RDI’s funds toward are community-wide communication for events and updates and a new community center.

“They came together as individuals on the same priorities,” Gilmore said. “Everybody was saying the same thing.”

Cohort member Kim Coreson said the program has been productive and is a good mixture of training and workshopping.

“I have really appreciated that the very first session I went to, we talked about personality types,” Coreson said. “It really helps you say, ‘OK, I see the world like this but not everybody does,’ and how are they seeing it?”

The leadership program has three more sessions spread out over the next several months before RDI will turn the cohort loose to keep their project up on their own. 

“We anticipate doing a second cohort,” Gilmore said. “That's one thing that we are researching and figuring out how we continue to build. It's not just a one-and-done program. As we know, building a pipeline of community leaders, it doesn't just stop at one time, so we want to make sure that this is an opportunity for years to come for other people in the community and grow that pipeline for the community.”

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.

    Cohort members of the Rural Community Leadership Program, led by Rural Development Initiatives, eat dinner before convening for the Nov. 30 in-person session held at SkillSource in Othello.