October 25, 2016 at 5:03 p.m.
Cooperation pays huge dividends
Editorial
It may be impossible to overstate the importance of the grant awarded last week to the Jay-Blackford Manufacturing Council.
Back about 15 to 20 years ago, long before the manufacturing council was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, a group of Jay County citizens got together to try to find a meaningful way to transform their community in the 21st century. And when we say they got together, we’re talking about meeting after meeting at 7 a.m. every week.
That group — with essential leadership from The Portland Foundation — came to the conclusion that the best way to build a better future was to focus on education.
Sounds simple, but it wasn’t.
If future generations of Jay County citizens were to have better paying jobs, they were going to need more skills in an increasingly competitive world.
They were going to have to reach higher than they’d ever been reached before.
That meant several things:
•An increased emphasis on the value of education, particularly post-high school education.
•A way for post-high school students to take on new challenges in a way that was affordable and fit their lifestyle.
•Working with industry — employers who knew the next generation workforce was going to have to be smarter, more nimble and more flexible than its predecessors — to create partnerships where partnerships had not existed before.
And over the past 15 to 20 years, those pieces of the puzzle have come together.
The Portland Foundation has introduced hundreds of local students to the idea — the goal — of higher education.
The consortium that put together the Jay County Promise program — the foundation, United Way, Jay County Development Corporation, John Jay Center for Learning and others — has made the idea of saving for college or technical school the norm rather than an exception.
John Jay, in itself, created vast new opportunities.
But until the announcement last week of a grant of nearly $1 million to establish a new industrial maintenance program, the full potential had not been reached.
Now it has been.
After years of wishing and dreaming and planning, John Jay will be able to transform its lower level into a high-end training center that will help the next generation gain critical skills that will lead to larger paychecks and a more prosperous future.
It has not been an easy road.
And it’s a measure of how creative and flexible those involved have been that this project will move forward in a partnership with Wright State University’s Lake Campus in Celina, Ohio.
Interstate cooperation like that doesn’t happen everyday.
But it is happening, and it does indeed have the opportunity to change lives and change the future.
That is impossible to overstate. — J.R.
Back about 15 to 20 years ago, long before the manufacturing council was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, a group of Jay County citizens got together to try to find a meaningful way to transform their community in the 21st century. And when we say they got together, we’re talking about meeting after meeting at 7 a.m. every week.
That group — with essential leadership from The Portland Foundation — came to the conclusion that the best way to build a better future was to focus on education.
Sounds simple, but it wasn’t.
If future generations of Jay County citizens were to have better paying jobs, they were going to need more skills in an increasingly competitive world.
They were going to have to reach higher than they’d ever been reached before.
That meant several things:
•An increased emphasis on the value of education, particularly post-high school education.
•A way for post-high school students to take on new challenges in a way that was affordable and fit their lifestyle.
•Working with industry — employers who knew the next generation workforce was going to have to be smarter, more nimble and more flexible than its predecessors — to create partnerships where partnerships had not existed before.
And over the past 15 to 20 years, those pieces of the puzzle have come together.
The Portland Foundation has introduced hundreds of local students to the idea — the goal — of higher education.
The consortium that put together the Jay County Promise program — the foundation, United Way, Jay County Development Corporation, John Jay Center for Learning and others — has made the idea of saving for college or technical school the norm rather than an exception.
John Jay, in itself, created vast new opportunities.
But until the announcement last week of a grant of nearly $1 million to establish a new industrial maintenance program, the full potential had not been reached.
Now it has been.
After years of wishing and dreaming and planning, John Jay will be able to transform its lower level into a high-end training center that will help the next generation gain critical skills that will lead to larger paychecks and a more prosperous future.
It has not been an easy road.
And it’s a measure of how creative and flexible those involved have been that this project will move forward in a partnership with Wright State University’s Lake Campus in Celina, Ohio.
Interstate cooperation like that doesn’t happen everyday.
But it is happening, and it does indeed have the opportunity to change lives and change the future.
That is impossible to overstate. — J.R.
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