Friday night was tailor-made to celebrate the positive change today’s younger generations are making in rural communities such as Iola.
Guest speakers at the Iola Area Chamber of Commerce’s annual dinner were 30-somethings Erika Nelson and Liz Sosa, representatives of the PowerUp movement sweeping the state.
And winners of the night’s business of the year award were equally young Levi and Savannah Flory of TLC Garden Center, LaHarpe. The Florys represented businesses with 25 or fewer employees. Herff Jones won the Tier 2 level, but had no representative there to accept the award.
The PowerUp speakers told of their decisions to locate in rural Kansas. Nelson settled in Lucas, a town of 400 in northern Kansas where she is an artist.
“It’s a quirky town that accepts me for who I am — which quickly dispelled all the myths I had about small towns,” and their tight-knit clans, Nelson said. She moved there eight years ago.
Sosa moved to Garden City, “which isn’t a small town, but is geographically rural when you see how isolated it is,” she said.
When they each ventured alone to their new-found communities they wondered what they would have in common with the townsfolk.
“It was very isolating,” Nelson said. “You wondered if you were the only person up past 11 o’clock.”
Those feelings of isolation and untapped energy were channeled into the PowerUp Movement by Marci Penner of the Kansas Sampler Foundation.
Today, the movement is spreading across the state to reach 21-to-39-year-olds and encourage them to get involved with each other and specifically, with their communities.
“It’s not that we weren’t willing to do anything, but we were never at the table when decisions were being made,” Sosa said. “We’ve never truly been asked in what way we want to contribute.”
The PowerUp movement is designed to corral that young energy in an effort to get younger generations to embrace their particular town’s attributes.
Recognizing the value of small town life is something that should be celebrated, Nelson said.
“Have you forgotten that it’s odd to not lock your doors?” she said, noting the general safety people in small towns feel.
Participants hope by spreading the word of the PowerUp/Rural By Choice movement, others in their 20s and 30s will be attracted to small town life and in a greater effort help sustain rural Kansas towns.
“This is not an economic development tool,” Sosa said. “But we do have a goal of connecting people of our generation and sparking encouragement and excitement for small town life.”
