When people in the community choose to spend locally, they are deciding to help grow Grand Island in more ways than one. Not only does shopping locally help stimulate the local economy, but it increases development, encourages younger workers to stay in the area, and improves the quality of life for the area. This 3-year gorilla marketing campaign is designed to educate residents and ultimately alter buying behavior.
This program allows high school students in Grand Island and the surrounding communities of Wood River, St. Paul, Aurora, and Centura High Schools to identify their aptitudes to become entrepreneurs, innovators, and builders. Grounded in global Gallup research, the Builder Profile 10 (BP 10) assessment will be administered to high school freshmen or sophomores in local schools both public and private to identify those students with extreme builder talents. Those students are then invited to participate in the Future Builders Challenge.
Grand Island’s low unemployment rate (currently 2%) speaks to a strong local economy. At the same time, it makes it challenging for existing businesses to maintain or expand their operations and difficult to attract new businesses to the community. In years past, business recruitment was focused on “location, location, location”, today, the most commonly cited determinant for site location is workforce. Talent attraction, retention, and upskilling is essential to address this.
Cooperative education is a method of combining classroom education with real work experience for college credit. At its core, the Grand Island cohort of Career Scholars Program supports workforce and economic development in Nebraska. Through this partnership with Wayne State College, students are indentified as freshmen to participate, leading them to an internship with a Grand Island business during their entire senior year. Most interns go on to be hired for full time positions. This is what we hope for to help address our need for bachelor degree level workers.
https://www.wsc.edu/homepage/450/career_scholars_grand_island
COMMITTED TO GROWTH
