“I’ve never liked the phrase “doing more with less.” It gets tossed around so often that it sounds noble, but it usually feels like a scolding. It implies people aren’t working hard enough or wringing every drop out of their already-limited time, energy, and budgets. It piles guilt on top of fatigue.
That phrase comes straight out of a scarcity mindset.
We often gain insight from this talented duo who are the founders of SaveYour.Town. GTA Vice Chair, Akos Kovach recently sent an email response.
Dear Deb & Becky,
I so appreciate your newsletter and the constant yet gentle drumbeat to help us reinvent, revitalize and renew our communities.
Your messaging encouraged me to bring to our board of directors an effort to reframe not only our geographic positioning, but also branding as well as cooperative calendarization planning.
Just before covid hit our association along with our two incorporated towns, our county government and numerous service and civic groups began a project to reach out to every group, club, church, etc. to help put their weekly, monthly, semiannual and annual events on a five-year event planning calendar.
Covid strangled the effort until now. And although the Greenlee Tourism Association has always included our neighboring counties in New Mexico (Catron, Grant & Hidalgo) plus our three bordering Arizona counties (Cochise, Graham and Apache) to help us build a new Magnificent Seven 5-year planning calendar.
Why? Because in all seven counties we are rural, mostly off the main highways. Many of our communities are not incorporated. Budgets, even for incorporated towns and cities, often lack a stable platform to promote public events of all sizes and interests. What binds us together is our unique rural quality.
We share family histories, working environments, farming, ranching – all the things that make us special yet remote. How do we gain a huge audience? Social media, podcasts, newsletters and hopefully a new full blown and robust planning calendar. Often times we can look at the calendar while planning and event and reach out to nearby cities and towns to combine audience participation by sharing each other’s activities. This can mean additional overnight accommodations and increased attendance to these events.
So thank you both for continuing to encourage us in not only Saving our Towns and also enlarging our community outreach.
Most gratefully, Akos Kovach, Vice Chair, Greenlee Tourism Association