Bob Curran, President of the Longwood Rotary Club Foundation, has developed a process to move from the Community Needs Assessment recently completed to the development of needed and sustainable major projects we can support. 
 
As a result of the Needs Assessment eight categories of projects were defined: 
  • Housing
  • Transportation
  • Education
  • Quality of life
  • Community improvement 
  • Health
  • Public safety
  • Job training
These categories identify the areas where the community identified significant needs we can potentially meet. To convert these categories into specific projects we have to decide where we want to focus. To that end, all attending completed a survey in which we ranked these categories by their importance. The results of that prioritization defined the following 5 areas for detailed development into projects, listed in the order of importance we collectively assigned : Education, Transportation, Housing, with Community Development and Job Training essentially tied at number 4. 
 
Based on this ranking we will meet with those organizations focused in a selected area to develop specific projects for membership consideration and selection. The goal is to have projects ready for membership approval in March this year.
 
Projects can be of any size. Working with community foundations and funding sources there is no expense barrier to what we can take on. And by making multi-year commitments with the engagement of our current and future leadership (Tammy Duering, Bob Curran, and Vicki Gehrt) time is not an issue. Our critical role is leadership. By leading the discussions of need, turning these ideas into ready-to-go projects, and then working with others in the community to complete the project(s), we will move many ideas from the drawing board/discussion stage to completion.