I would like to personally invite all Homer - Kachemak Bay Rotary Club members, and other business and community leaders, to the Rotary Club of Soldotna's second community and economic development forum at the Soldotna Library on July 23, 2018, starting at 9 am.
This is a no-charge invitation-only event and a catered lunch will be provided to attendees.
Please forward this Email promptly to all of your club members. We very much hope that your club and its members will participate.
This year's forum will focus very specifically upon identifying underutilized economic resources of all types, matching them with community priorities, then identifying new business opportunities to exploit those underutilized resources and build a stronger local community and economy.
The intent is to use a well-proven, community-based process to find new economic opportunities that work for that particular community by bringing together the wisdom and knowledge of business and community leaders, initially in a brainstorming sort of session and then with more rigorous economic analysis. The success of this approach depends upon strong participation by business and community leaders.
This process has been used successfully through the US West to help diversity local economies. I have attached a recent article in The Western Planner journal that discusses the ASAP process and Western counties where it has been used successfully.
The workshop leader will be Professor Don Albrecht of Utah State University, a leading US authority on economic re-development in the rural US west and the author of the leading book on the topic, "Rethinking Rural".
At the 2017 forum, attendees strongly urged that Soldotna Rotary Club continue the process due to Rotary's non-partisan, non-advocacy community service orientation.
I hope that you can attend and bring along your key staff members and encourage other business and community leaders to attend. If you have any questions, please give me a call on my cell, 398-0480 or Email me at kashi@alaska.net
Yours very truly
Joe Kashi