Though the phrase “going local” is growing in popularity across the nation, it can have an especially strong meaning in a small, tight-knit town like Athens.
A workshop hosted by Rural Action and the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks will focus on community investment, particularly in Athens’ food economy. It will be headed by Michael Shuman, author of Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity.
“What really sets our community apart is that we have this extremely diverse, robust local food economy,” said Leslie Schaller, director of programs at ACEnet.
ACEnet and Rural Action both design programs to deepen the growth of the regional food economy and work with a large number of food and farm businesses in the area.
“I think it’s more important than ever, actually, to focus on the local economy and keeping local dollars in the region, and one of the ways we do that is through the food economy,” said Jen Harvey, client services and strategic development assistant at ACEnet.
Another advantage to focusing on smaller cities such as Athens is that even modest amounts of money have instant, more noticeable results in terms of what it does for the economy, Shuman said.
“People are looking at big banks, Wall Street, and they’re not sure what’s happening,” said Michelle Decker, executive director of Rural Action. “They want to control where their dollars go, and (they) want to invest in their community.”
The workshop will identify strategies to reinvest money locally, improving the community in terms of income, wealth and jobs. Participants will be taught various tools for local investment, and then have the opportunity for discussion as well as meeting others in the area with similar goals and interests for their business.
“We have 30 trillion dollars in long-term investment … and about half of our economy is local, small business,” Schuman said. “So if our markets were working efficiently, roughly half of those assets — 15 trillion — would be going into local, small business. In fact, nothing is. That, to me, represents a market failure.”
gm220908@ohiou.edu
If You Go
What: Local Dollar, Local Sense workshop
When: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday
Where: Dairy Barn Art Center, 8000 Dairy Lane
Admission: $50 registration
