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54 °F Forecast | Road Cams Monday, April 5, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend March 28, 2004 Children at rural Williams Elementary School are enjoying art, music and sports programs thanks to a coalition of community groups and a $300,000 grant from the Ford Family Foundation. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli Williams: Grant is putting burg on the road to rejuvenation By JOHN DARLING for the Mail Tribune Tired of its stereotype as a remote area for jobless loggers, farmers, miners and retro hippies, the tiny burg of Williams has landed a $300,000 grant for educational and community-building projects designed to create jobs and futures for residents in horticulture, the arts and small business. Half a dozen community groups joined forces to win the grant from the Ford Family Foundation of Roseburg. The three-year award � a Rural Community Schools Partnership Grant for Lifelong Learning — began in mid-2003 and was one of 16 awarded from 180 applicants. "We’re incredibly excited about this and see it taking Williams down the path toward economic viability and family-wage jobs, so we don’t become a California refuge or just a bedroom community for Grants Pass and Medford," said Rob Hambledon, project manager for the Williams Education Coalition, which is coordinating the grant. The money is funding several projects designed to grow business, develop community and create a common vision among the 2,000 residents of Williams Valley, Hambledon said. The grant, he said, will drive education and jobs in: Advertisement Agricultural trades, such as nurseries, seed stock businesses, greenhouses, retail outlets and value-added products (i.e. salsa rather than tomatoes). Applied arts, such as leatherwork, painting, ceramics and building musical instruments. Programs teach artists skills in marketing, Internet and retailing so they’re not just selling their work piece by piece on an occasional basis. Micro-enterprise development, i.e. growing businesses out of homes or storefronts rather than taking them to a larger urban center. The community is starting a forestry project to thin fire-prone trees, obtaining federal grants for homeowners. Residents plan to market cut trees for poles and wood chips, with revenues going back to sustain the program, he added. One member of the Williams Education Coalition, Communiversity, sprang up a dozen years ago when Williams Valley parents got tired of sending their kids to Grants Pass for sporting activities, said coordinator Heidi Hansen. They partnered with Josephine County Parks and Recreation to do sports locally, eventually expanding to educational classes with an all-volunteer teaching staff and credit courses through Rogue Community College. When budget cuts whacked music education, Hansen funneled $20,000 from a Seven Feathers Foundation grant through Communiversity for violins, guitars and a music teacher, later augmenting it with $15,000 from the Ford grant for five more years. A $100,000 grant from the Rotarian Four Way Foundation of Grants Pass, in the years before the Ford money, bought computers, televisions and other educational support equipment for Williams Elementary, she said. "Communiversity is the highly regarded umbrella organization coordinating the flow of grant money and reaching out to the whole Applegate Valley area, so people don’t have to go into Grants Pass, Medford and Ashland," said Hansen. "These grants are not just about funding programs," said Hambledon. "It’s about community building. We’re dealing with diverse cultural segments and an 85 percent poverty rate among children at Williams Elementary. We’ve been decimated by the decline of logging, farming and mining. We’re trying to identify the abundant resources here and articulate how we want our economy to grow." To make the effort more locally owned and sustained, networkers like Hansen and Hambledon are broadening fund-raising into silent auctions, donations, yard and bake sales and appealing to the "awful lot of rich people" who’ve migrated in from California and built the larger homes dotting hillsides, said Communiversity director John Rickert. "The working poor were the farmers of earlier times," said Craig Dent, executive director of Pacifica gardens, a coalition member. "That’s gone in the tank. Now, there’s a lot of California money here and that skewed the average income in the census and that has disqualified us from at least three grants so far." The reality of poverty and lack of education in the Williams Valley, Dent said, is shown in other statistics: 8 percent unemployment; 52 percent of female heads of households living below the poverty level; 25 percent of students’ parents having no high school education; 17 percent of students not graduating from high school; and 38 percent of high school grads not going on to higher education. "The big homeowners mostly have their money invested elsewhere; they’re not working and they don’t participate in a holistic economy here," said Dent. "So what we’re trying to do with Pacifica is help create support to graduate work-ready high school students for jobs that are actually here." The whole network of programs is working and has brought the diverse factions of the community together, helping people learn to communicate beyond their long-standing philosophical differences and "to realize we’re not enemies," said Jan Figoni, principal of Williams Elementary. "Our kids are poor and jobs are scarce and it’s because of the lack of educated adults in our families," said Figoni. "The (Ford) grant has brought factions together and is enriching our kids, giving them experiences � art, sports, performances -- that you find only in cities and they haven’t been able to get to. "It’s created lifelong learning here from kindergarten to old age, increased our economic viability — and people are seeing they can become entrepreneurs and we can make it here." John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected]. The network of programs The Williams Education Coalition is coordinating the $300,000 Ford Family Foundation grant. Partners are: Communiversity, an after-hours, lifelong learning program held in Williams Elementary School, teaching small business management, accounting, marketing, resume-writing, interviewing and computers in cooperation with Rogue Community College staff, as well as fun, community-building classes like tai-chi, African drumming, wine making, yoga, theater, weight-lifting, herbal remedies and caregiving. Pacifica: a Garden in the Siskiyous, a 422-acre learning center for the horticultural trades and natural resources sciences focused on economic development. It includes botanical garden, nature center, school, production nursery and a 5,600-square-foot community center, all from previous grants and gifts and now operating debt-free. White Oak Farm and Education Center, a small, organic farm west of Williams offering educational programs and Summer Farm Camp, teaching botanical sciences and sustainable farming to second- through 10th- graders. Howling Acres Wolf Sanctuary, home to 30 abandoned or abused wolves who can’t be returned to the wild and offering an educational program. Williams Creek Watershed Council, offering educational programs and training. Williams Elementary School, with 100 children, interfacing classes and projects to take advantage of education offered by other coalition partners. Sugarloaf Learning Center, a home-school consortium offering fun and educational classes for kids in kindergarten through eighth grade. Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback 3 WEEKS FREE! 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