The fate of the area is in our hands, says Our Valley Our Future — and you’re included

WENATCHEE — A little over a decade ago, local organizers hosted a TEDx event at the campus of Wenatchee Valley College, titled “Connecting the Dots.” It was intended as a symposium on ideas for improving not just the commerce and housing aspects of our community, but also social outcomes, work prospects, and even healthier living.

Steve Maher of Our Valley Our Future says, “People came out of that TEDx conference kind of fired up, like, ‘Okay, we can do something.’”

In the beginning, Maher says, it was mostly community leaders and economic development types who formed an ad hoc committee, concerned about the future of the Wenatchee Valley. He says they heard about a national contest called “America’s Best Communities,” put on by Frontier Communications and a few other groups, and they decided to put in an application.

The Wenatchee area got all the way to the semifinals in this contest. That alone generated about $100,000 in “seed money” for this new, as-yet-unnamed committee to put together an action plan.

A consultant from Bend, Oregon, Steve Ames, was hired for his expertise in community planning, and soon the group adopted his “Oregon Model” for planning, a grassroots-focused system that leans hard on input from the community in a series of questions, the most important of which is “What is one big vision you have for this area?”

“A lot of communities do this kind of ‘visioning’ work,” Maher says, “and then it sits on a shelf because they don’t have anybody leading them.” So this new ad hoc steering committee did just that. They stepped up and found community leaders who would commit to implementing an action plan based on all of this community input, and by 2016, they had something official to hold in their hands.

All of the “big visions” from the community input stage became the projects that went into the Action Plan. Every project from the Imagine Wenatchee event on May 15 of this year came from that public input — and the analyzed, articulated 2017 Action Plan from the group that became known first as “Our Valley, What’s Next?” and then eventually Our Valley Our Future.

In short, all it took to create the impetus for the massive positive changes and city improvements that are on deck was the effort of a few people who got together and decided to ask the people of this community what they wanted to do with their community.

And Steve Maher is clear: “There’s stuff going on.” It’s because ordinary people have stepped up with their big ideas and visions. The fact that the Spanish-speaking demographic in the valley turned up so much in OVOF’s sampling and polling — as much as 27% in their last questionnaire — means that the next Action Plan will have details on a Latino Business and Cultural District along South Wenatchee Avenue, Maher says.

As you can see by everything going on in Wenatchee, these plans have teeth. They’re backed by some enormous support: Partners of OVOF include City Works departments, Chambers of Commerce, Housing Authorities, Port Authorities, Public Utility Districts and more. It’s a pretty exhaustive list that pools the brainpower of a lot of agencies.

But the thing that’s animating Steve Maher by the end of this interview is OVOF’s “strategic alliance” with Thriving Together that’s recently materialized. Thriving Together is a group that focuses on health and wellbeing in our region, and to that end, they’ve developed seven “Vital Conditions” that need to exist and be strengthened in order to maintain a healthy community, not just physically but mentally, emotionally and any other measurable factor of positive outcomes.

And the one thing they agree on the most is one of those Vital Conditions that Thriving Together calls “Belonging and Civic Muscle.” There’s a lot more information about it on their website, but what it boils down to is this: Health includes community belonging. Feeling like you’re part of something. Civic engagement and actual agency to get things done.

That’s been Our Valley Our Future’s mission all along.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media