Great Things Can Happen In Small Places

Why would young people choose to live in rural communities? What is the attraction? With disappearing family farms, empty storefronts along main street, pessimistic parents, steady consolidation turning small towns into bedroom communities and media images and messages of popular culture, it is no wonder that rural youths leave their home towns and don’t look back.

Most rural people have a good feeling about growing up where they did. That is all nice but it doesn’t put bread on the table. They struggle to imagine the opportunities available locally that compare with the standard of living and career tracks available in the cities.

Parents, schools and churches can do a better job of teaching and showing how people can and do succeed in rural communities.

Why this is a good place? The secret is that because of the fewness of the people, everyone is needed and is challenged to be more and do more in order to survive. Success doesn’t come easy. Whether it is farmers on the land, creators in their shops and home businesses, or business people along Main Street, it takes creativity, ingenuity and a reliance on oneself to rise above the daunting obstacles that confront them.

Here is the formula for having, or even being pushed into, a life full of challenge and growth. Divide the number of people into the number of community roles and responsibilities. You get a ratio of involvement. Because of the small population, we have to look beyond the fence line, the community and beyond the borders of the state and nation to market our products and services.

In every community, you can find dynamic people who have vision, excel at what they do and reach out to add leadership to the larger community. They are living examples of how great things can happen in small places. Rural youths need a vision of seeing how people can dream big and live large and still have the quality of life of small town and rural America.

- Entrepreneurship. They also need to learn understand entrepreneurship as a viable way of making a living. The school and the community collaborate on a curriculum that teaches basic principles of being in business for oneself. Upward to forty percent of the rural economy is based on self-employment.

A wise man told me once the secret of business success: find a need and fill it with quality.

"Find a need" is the vision of what is needed, a niche to fill. No matter how good our idea, it has to match up with a real need. Then we have something. The second ingredient - fill it with quality - makes our product competitive and reliable. Shoddy workmanship and service with eventually lose out.

There is one more ingredient to this formula. Make your product or service known to the people who need it. We have to be good at marketing. It doesn’t matter if it fills a wonderful need and is of the finest quality if people don’t know about it and aren’t persuaded to try it.

- Computer skills. One of the needs of society and in rural communities is trained people to work with computers, technical support, telecommunications, software development and high tech jobs. With the telecommunication revolution the world has suddenly become smaller. The world is at our fingertips. The best minds and the best libraries are but a few clicks away. And so are markets. And suppliers. And colleagues. And friends.

There is no such thing as rural isolation. There are no limits except our imagination and our dedication. We are still in the infancy of e-commerce and the vast changes it will bring to our economy. The center of the intellectual universe is no longer Boston but in our own homes. Telecommuting eliminates distance as a barrier to high tech jobs.

- The importance of community. Youth need to experience community service. If they grow up with a sense of community, they understand the role it plays in contributing to personal development and family life. It does take a village to give a full measure of happiness.

It is also fun and rewarding to be a leader with other leaders. Young people can experience the feelings of joy that comes with being needed and contributing to others. They need exposure to leaders who care and show them how to organize themselves to do good.

- Rural identity. The school needs to educate young people about their rural/local culture, customs, literature, poetry, values and history. There is a logic and rationale to rural living that differs from mainstream urban values. If youth understand rural life and are able to contrast its strengths and weaknesses with urban/suburban lifestyles, they won’t automatically view rural life as backward and inferior. It is a part of knowing oneself and the roots you came from.

With an entrepreneurial outlook, a sense of community and service, information age skills, and identifying with the rural values and culture of growing up in a small community; rural youth will want come back to live. Great things can happen in small places.