Cultivate Change: Summit Registration Opens
Registration is now open for the Southern Vermont Economic Summit. This day-long event will be held on Thursday, May 12th at the Grand Summit Resort at Mount Snow in Dover, Vermont. Registration can be found at www.SoVermontZone.com/Summit. The theme is “Cultivate Change”. The 2022 Summit will feature a wide range of topics that are top of mind for southern Vermonters. Workshops and speakers will dive deep into development, refugees, housing, ARPA, and business succession and acceleration.
The summit will feature two guests who bring a different take on revitalizing rural towns. Daniel Herriges will provide two workshops on housing and redevelopment. Herriges serves as Senior Editor and founding member at Strong Towns, an outstanding organization dedicated to revitalizing small and rural communities. Chet Clem, the lunchtime keynote speaker, is President of Lyme Properties. This NH-based company focuses on master planning, permitting, and transformative real estate projects, grounded in a philosophy of community-conscious development. A contributing member of Proud Places and 3rd generation leader of the “Damn It, Do It” movement, Chet was formerly the Editorial Manager at The Onion.
Other highlights will include speakers from Brattleboro’s new refugee resettlement office, the Multicultural Community Center, which is leading regional efforts to welcome people displaced from Afghanistan. With the topic of municipal ARPA funding on everyone’s mind, the Summit will also feature a workshop with Katie Buckley of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, geared to help local towns formulate successful project ideas. Program details are being continuously updated at SoVermontZone.com/Summit.
The Summit is made possible by Summit Sponsors People’s United Bank and Brattleboro Savings and Loan. The Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation and Bennington County Regional Commission organize the Summit on behalf of the Southern Vermont Economic Development Zone. The Summit is part of the Southern Vermont Economy Project which helps build capacity, expertise and resources in the Zone with support from the USDA Rural Community Development Initiative.
Our Sponsors:
About the Southern Vermont Economy Summit
The Southern Vermont Economy Summit is an initiative of Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation’s Southern Vermont Economy Project (SVEP) works to stabilize, improve and expand the rural economic and workforce development network in Southern Vermont. Its goal is to increase capacity and collaboration among partnering organizations and communities. SVEP is funded by the USDA Rural Community Development Initiative, as a program of BDCC & SeVEDS. For more information on the summit, please visit: www.SoVermontZone.com/summit
About the Southern Vermont Economy Project
The Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation’s Southern Vermont Economy Project provides training and technical assistance to increase local capacity, skills, and resources in order to advance local projects critical to Southern Vermont achieving community, economic, and workforce development goals. In its second round of funding by the USDA Rural Community Development Initiative, SVEP 2.0 partners include; the Towns of Rockingham, Brattleboro and Bennington; the Windham Regional Commission; Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies; Bennington County Regional Commission; Bennington County Industrial Corporation; Readsboro Hometown Redevelopment Inc.; and Bellows Falls Area Development Corporation. For more information please visit: www.brattleborodevelopment.com/svep/
About the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation
The Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation is a private, nonprofit economic development organization that serves as a catalyst for industrial and commercial growth throughout Southeastern Vermont, including Windham County and the towns of Readsboro, Searsburg, Winhall and Weston. BDCC serves as the State of Vermont’s certified Regional Development Corporation (RDC) for the greater Windham County area. BDCC is one of 12 RDCs throughout Vermont. This BDCC activity was made possible in part by a grant from the State of Vermont through the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. For more information visit: https://brattleborodevelopment.com/
About Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies
Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies (SeVEDS) is an affiliate of BDCC that grew from a 2008 grassroots effort, initiated by BDCC, to reverse the economic decline of the Windham Region and plan for the economic impacts from the closure of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. In 2014, after multiple years of regional input, education and data gathering, SeVEDS submitted the Windham Region’s federally recognized S.M.A.R.T. Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for federal approval. For more information visit: www.seveds.com
About the Bennington County Regional Commission
The Bennington County Regional Commission (BCRC) was created by the seventeen towns and villages it serves and works on behalf of those municipalities to build strong, resilient, and sustainable communities, to foster economic prosperity, and to promote a high quality of life for residents of the region. The BCRC is one of Vermont’s eleven regional planning commissions, and it also provides the services of a regional development corporation. For more information visit www.bcrcvt.org
About Bennington County’s Regional Economic Development Group (RED Group)
The Regional Economic Development Working Group (RED Group) is a volunteer body committed to increasing the shared prosperity and quality of life for the seventeen municipalities in southwestern Vermont. The group has a diverse membership that reflects the varied community, business, workforce, and demographic characteristics of the region. The RED Group focuses on the internal and external economic development issues that affect the Bennington County region as a whole; the regional implications of local economic development issues; the process of regional economic development from local, state, and federal perspectives; and options for future initiatives.
About the Southern Vermont Economic Development Zone
The Southern Vermont Economic Development Zone was established by an act of the 2015 Vermont Legislature. The Zone convened a Committee which called on Bennington County and Windham County to develop a region-wide CEDS. For more information please visit: www.SoVermontZone.com
About the Southern Vermont Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy
A Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, or CEDS, is a strategy-driven plan for regional economic development. The CEDS development process is designed to bring together public and private sectors in the creation of an economic roadmap to diversify and strengthen the regional economy. The CEDS development process analyzes the regional economy and serves as a guide for establishing regional goals and objectives, developing and implementing a regional plan of action, and identifying investment priorities and funding sources. The Windham Region’s federally approved CEDS was completed in 2015 by SeVEDS and is being implemented by BDCC. The 5-year update will include Bennington County and all Towns within the Southern Vermont Economic Development Zone. For more information please visit: www.SoVermontZone.com/CEDS
