Nineteen people from around the Lowcountry participated May 10 in a new Entrepreneurial Boot Camp offered by the Center for a Better South in Walterboro.
The class, taught by Earl Gregorich of the Columbia office of the S.C. Small Business Development Centers, offered insights to participants in starting small businesses and organizations, including how to deal with paperwork to register a business, finding funding, fundamentals of business plans, sales, marketing and more.
Gregorich led the May 9 class in Walterboro.
“Now I can move forward with confidence,” one participant said. Another added, “I feel ready to apply for my LLC company and actually begin to move forward, versus contemplating how to make it happen. The comfort level of having a support team is liberating to move into action.” Continue reading “May 9 Entrepreneurial Boot Camp is a success”
By Andy Brack, Center for a Better South | There’s a palpable sense of energy flowing through the six counties of the southern tip of South Carolina in the federally-designated Promise Zone, which is now a year and a half old.
Walk along a downtown street or drive past expanding businesses and you get a tingling that things are happening. Two years ago, the SouthernCarolina Alliance, lead partner of the Promise Zone, was about the only regional organization that worked to pull people together to develop projects to benefit the area. Fortunately, the organization had the foresight in 2014 to try to win the Promise Zone designation as a way to bolster inter-agency collaboration and get local, state and federal organizations in silos to come out into the open and work better together. Continue reading “BRACK: Promise Zone keeps pushing for progress”
OCT. 19, 2016 | The Center for a Better South this week will lead an eight-member team from Allendale and Hampton counties in the S.C. Lowcountry Promise Zone for leadership training offered by the national outreach group NeighborWorks America.
The training in Columbus, Ohio, will focus on ways that neighbors can work with neighbors to build communities at NeighborWorks’ invitation-only Community Leadership Institute. It offers three days of meetings to support local leaders by helping them to sharpen abilities and to discover new tools and initiatives to succeed at home.
Among those attending (in alphabetical order) are:
Andy Brack, president of the Center for a Better South;
Georgia S. Cohen, Allendale leader;
Larry M. Crapse, Hampton consultant;
Faye H. Gooding, CEO, Le Creuset of America in Hampton County;
Michelle Knight of the Lowcountry Council of Governments;
Dorothy Riley, Allendale leader;
Shekinah Washington, executive director, Allendale County Alive;
“This is a phenomenal honor and opportunity for members of the team to learn leadership and economic development lessons from national experts and bring lessons home to implement,” said Brack.
The team’s state sponsor is the S.C. Association of Community Economic Development, based in Charleston. The Center is a member of SCACED, which also is a NeighborWorks partner.
“SCACED is excited about the partnership with our member and the leadership it is taking in the Promise Zone,” said SCACED President and CEO Bernie Mazyck. “This delegation is designed to represent South Carolina and bring some of the best practices in community economic development back to South Carolina.”
Better South President Andy Brack spoke last year at a Promise Zone organizational luncheon.
AUG. 17, 2016 | A $50,000 grant for technical assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will allow the Center for a Better South to develop and implement a new entrepreneurial training program in the S.C. Lowcountry Promise Zone.
“What great news this funding is for people who live in the Promise Zone,” said Center President Andy Brack. “It will help us identify community needs in each of the Promise Zone counties for economic development training and then to target the kind of classes on entrepreneurship that people want so they can start businesses and improve their communities.”
Between now and the end of the year, the Center will hold about a dozen meetings in Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties to identify and assess needs. Starting in January, it expects to offer free training opportunities to help communities build economic capacity, Brack said.
The Rural Business Development Grant also will allow the Center to develop a broad database of individuals and organizations that can be shared throughout the Promise Zone to connect people in new ways and to target training activities that will strengthen communities economically.
The year-long project also includes a $5,000 baseline statistical study funded by the Center that will offer economic, educational and other demographic indicators to allow the Promise Zone to measure its progress.
The Center for a Better South was a leading driver of the area’s combined effort to apply for and be successful in winning the federal designation for the region to be a Promise Zone. You can get updates on the Promise Zone at its website: http://www.SCPromiseZone.org.
Fields across the South are sprouting corn and other crops or getting prepped, as highlighted in this photo of a Calhoun County, S.C., farmer plowing in the Sandy Run community along U.S. Highway 176. Continue reading “It’s that time of the year”
MARCH 2016 | A newly-released strategic plan that provides long-term guidance for the S.C. Lowcountry Promise Zone received major input from the Center for a Better South, including production of a four-minute video about the project.
The plan, released earlier this month after town halls, meetings and strategy sessions involving 1,000 people, organizes efforts to reduce poverty in the southern tip of South Carolina through strategic efforts of eight workgroups, each of which has specific goals and all of which seek to achieve transformational goals by working together. Continue reading “Center provides more leadership in Promise Zone”
SouthernCarolina’s Sandy Steel and Justin Maxson of Winston-Salem, N.C., listen to Atlanta’s Donald Phoenix at the ThinkBIG conference in Charleston.
FEB. 2, 2016 | A dozen leading thinkers and analysts from across the South met over the weekend to learn about the S.C. Lowcountry Promise Zone and make suggestions to broaden the impact of its collaborative efforts to reduce poverty. Continue reading “National leaders provide critical input on Promise Zone”
Here’s a video we first highlighted in 2008 that outlines the mission of the Center for a Better South. Learn about the exciting research projects that have been published and are on tap by the Center for a Better South, a regional nonprofit to provide policy information for thinking Southern leaders. The video includes clips from Center founders Andy Brack, Leo Fishman and John Simpkins.
Center for a Better South’s Andy Brack outlines how the counties in the southern tip of South Carolina won the designation as one of the nation’s Promise Zones, a federal program to help areas with economic challenges get help to grow and change lives. Also part of the Sept. 9 meeting agenda for the designation’s partners and supporters: The lead organization, SouthernCarolina Alliance, and Vernita F. Dore, a deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More.
This classic old public works building in Ehrhardt, S.C., illustrates how rural communities invested in infrastructure in decades past. But the broken windows highlight how some infrastructure is eroding and needs more upkeep to stay modern. Photo by Andy Brack. All rights reserved.
