Community Visit Program
Vermonters across the state know that local action makes our communities vibrant. But local action often needs support from regional, state and even federal scales to achieve goals for prosperity.
Our Community Visit program is a way for towns to engage and bring together their residents, set common goals and directions in a neutral and facilitated structure, and access resources that will help them take action on those goals. The Community Visit program, initiated in 1996, is provided at no cost to communities and gets citizens engaged in working for their communities. We have conducted 20 Community Visits, from the northern border in Troy and Jay, south to Pownal.
How does a Community Visit work?
The program takes place over four months with small focus groups as well as plenary discussions that allow participants to reflect on strengths and challenges within their community, suggest issues suitable for action, set community priorities, and ultimately sign up to work on task forces to address those issues. Communities typically select three or four priority topics for action through a process of discussion, championing and voting.
Once priority areas are established, volunteers form Task Forces to advance the identified strategies; such as youth activities, economic development, infrastructure development or communications and events. Each Task Force has chairperson who will manage meetings and keep work moving forward. Local leaders have direct access through the process to state-wide resources, grant opportunities, non-profit, state and philanthropic partners through the Resource Team. Resource Team members represent state and federal agencies with expertise and resources, congressional staff, non-profit leaders, business or professional leaders with expertise that connects with the issues before the community, and leaders from other towns who have successfully addressed similar issues.
Past Community Visits
Since 1996 VCRD has conducted 16 Community Visits, usually working in two communities each year. For details on specific communities and their accomplishments, goals, and resources, please visit our Reports Page.
What will success mean for your town? For some towns, the Visit creates community goodwill and celebrations, such as Rutland’s Friday Night Live series; outdoor summertime events each week with live music, food and shopping opportunities. For others, it is used to leverage funds or planning resources, such as Pownal’s affordable housing project or Johnson’s downtown redesign. And for others, the Visit provides a mechanism to talk about important issues and begin long term work for the future, as in Killington’s 4-season tourism planning, or Poultney’s downtown revitalization work. All of these stories and more can be found on the Community Stories Page.
VCRD raises funds from business, private, philanthropic and state sources to be able to sustain this program. Communities are asked to contribute their time, energy and skills to make sure the process is well-attended and capacity is built locally to follow through on the identified priorities.
If your community would like more information about this program or is interested in hosting in a Community Visit, please contact Sarah Waring at swaring@vtrural.org.
