Case Study Perry County Kentucky The Challenge: Initially, it was a day care center that became the challenge for Gerry Roll in Perry County. Mothers in that area had no competent place to leave their children while they went to work, and in the estimated 2005-2009 Census FactFinder, nearly 61% of the females over the age of 16 were employed. Many had children that needed care. In addition, 24% of the families in the area lived below the poverty level, and of those, women headed 14.2% of the households. 1 Perry County’s economy has been tied to both lumbering and coal industries. The mechanization of these fields, especially coal mining have led to the decreases in population as families had to leave the area to make a living. Located deep in the hills of eastern Kentucky, it is a county like many of the others: a largely rural population, numbering 29,136 with the median family income at $29,660.2 Twenty-four percent of the families lived below the poverty level and for the past sixty years, more folks left the county than came in, with the exception of 1980.3 During the decade prior to that census, many industries in the northern states abandoned those areas and found new places for their factories in the south. Workers often have children or grandchildren for whom they are responsible. Childcare is not seen as economic development, yet if workers are continually called away for children’s issues, they are not effective at their jobs. Many, of course, cannot even consider work outside the home because of childcare. How can you sell a poor, rural county on the fact that quality childcare is a necessity for a place to thrive? What must they do to create and fund a good place for their children to stay during the day? How can you overcome the idea that “it can’t be done that way in Eastern Kentucky?” Where We Are: Hazard and Perry County has a quality child care facility. Learning to work together toward a common goal, even if it is one that most citizens don’t think can happen, has been the key factor. Conversations happen about improving the area, and all people come to the table to have their opinions heard. Visionaries, workers, organizers all are welcome because Perry County needs all of them to make strides. Once the people have come together and been successful, as they were with the quality childcare issue, they recognize they CAN work together, they CAN accept new ideas, and they CAN implement them. Furthermore, citizens of Hazard and Perry County recognize that things do not happen quickly, or, for that matter, within a three-year grant period. Success is not an overnight phenomenon: it often takes changing minds as well as actions and attitudes. Having once completed a program, they understood that it is often ongoing, rather than simply having a beginning and an end. It is part of a whole that is constantly changing. This county has created a Community Foundation to assist local projects. In addition, it was this leader, Gerry Roll who helped push it through. The legislation encourages the development of community foundations, especially in rural counties, with tax credits and other support. The law makes it possible for each county to create a pool of funds to use for its priorities, rather than always having to compete with each other for statewide pools of public funds. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. In this place, they have learned to work well with the elected officials and the “traditional leaders” because they have proven themselves to be trustworthy. Grant writing successes have constructed a firm foundation for working together. A willingness to let the traditional leaders be in the forefront of community based initiatives while working diligently in the background to make sure things get done is also something that the good leaders of Harlan County do. They check their egos at the front door in order to get to the goal. It is, after, the goal that matters. The Sparkplug Gerry Roll’s early life was as a child of a “hippie father and June Cleaver” mother, according to her. Her parents were social activists, and they lived rather without roots in many places on the West Coast. Their religion, as contrasted to the Baptists and Methodists in the hill country, was more like as Gerry terms it, “Budda-quak-ipalian”. As a young adult, she engaged in dangerous practices, and arrived in Kentucky looking not to save Appalachia, but to have Appalachia save her. She had spent nights with her 3 month-old child living in her car, so she knew the needs of single mothers. She sought in Perry County, a place that could open its arms and take both she and her children in. And, she found it. From those experiences grew her passion to help the citizens as they had helped her. The first project, in her words, was to have the best quality child care center in the State of Kentucky. It was a hard sell: folks there were not used to thinking of themselves as deserving of the best of anything. They had been beaten down into thinking they were not good enough. But Gerry had come from places where she knew what quality was, and she would have no less for her children, or the children of her friends. Her passion and drive was contagious. With grant money, building networks and bridges between groups, and lots of convincing, the dream came true. It began as HER dream, but quickly became the dream of the county: the citizens owned it, because they had worked hard on its creation and design, and they faced their own fears of change. Chief among Gerry’s admonitions is that she has never seen a good project fail for lack of money. Plenty have failed for lack of vision, passion, and hard work, but not for lack of money. Money follows good ideas. Success is about getting people to understand what the issue is, become involved in both the front end of planning and the back end of work, and then recognizing that it takes time. Chief characteristics of this Sparkplug: * Leaders are a product of their experiences. * Leaders continually face challenges and are not afraid to learn from them. * Leaders listen to what the members of the community think they need. * Leaders are passionate. * Leaders build bridges based on their own trustworthiness. * Leaders don’t care who gets the credit, as long as the job gets done. * Leaders understand that the citizens must own projects in order to succeed. * Leaders are not afraid to fail. 1 U.S. Census Bureau Fact Finder 2005-2009 Estimated 2 Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, Perry County 3 U. S. Census Bureau Fact Finder 2005-2009