July 3, 2018
Working in Community Vitality Changes Lives, Strengthens Community
As a Shawnee County Family & Consumer Sciences agent, Cindy Evans spent years successfully working in the fields of nutrition and family finance. She especially loved leading a community coalition that provided volunteer income tax assistance (VITA) to bring millions of dollars back into Shawnee County and to low-income families through Earned Income Tax Credits and tax refunds.
In 2014, Commissioners cut Shawnee County Extension funding. In response, Extension held a series of community forums to collect input and documentation of community priorities. As a result of the forums the Extension Board suggested a project which all four areas could contribute, was visible to the community and helped county commissioners hold greater value for Extension’s work. The topic that overlapped all areas was “food production education.” Soon after, Laurie Chandler left the director position to take an administrative role in Manhattan. Evans became director in September 2015.
In January 2016, four of the Shawnee County agents attended an agri-tourism event sponsored by the Kansas Department of Agriculture at The Schwinn Barn in Leavenworth. The workshop featured many state resources as well as familiar Extension resources. On the way home, agents realized that they should promote these excellent resources, including the Kansas Value Added Food Lab with Dr. Fadi Aramouni and Dr. Londa Nwaldike’s food safety expertise. As a result, two workshops were held: “Starting a Small Food Business” in June 2016 and “From Llamas to Lodging” in April 2017. Evans said, “Planning these events reminded me what great assets our staff bring to each project. They bring strong opinions and are willing to express them. It was a great team experience.”
In Leavenworth, Evans met Network Kansas staff and soon she was on the phone with them to see how to start an e-Community. Evans said, “I was surprised to learn that no one in Shawnee County had ever approached Network Kansas about forming an e-Community here.”
Entrepreneurship is one of the priorities for the Community Vitality Program Focus Team and Evans saw an opportunity to make her mark as a new director. Evans gets excited as she talks about the whole new world she entered. She worked with her Community Development Program Development Committee to convene a meeting of community stakeholders to learn about an e-Community. When they liked the idea, she worked with those selected community leaders to identify who else needed to be at the table. Together they prepared an application to become an e-Community and assumed the role as the Leadership Team. The group has approved three loans in 18 months to help start small businesses. Evans says, “These people have become great partners -- people I can count on to help me learn and grow as a professional working in the entrepreneurial arena. It’s just so fun to learn from them what they’ve spent their careers learning.”
Despite years as a school teacher and Extension Agent in Shawnee County, Evans found herself exposed to bankers, economic development experts and city leaders that she had no reason to be in contact with previously. She joined an Entrepreneurship Task Force with 48 members who meet each month to learn about each other. By listening for opportunities and asserting herself into groups, Evans is becoming a new thought leader for Topeka’s entrepreneurship work. Occasionally she finds someone who is surprised by her presence and questions why she’s there. She is happy to explain how this role fits in the Extension mission.
Evans says, “I always try to consider the assets that Extension can bring to the community table. We have organizational and facilitation skills, the ability and willingness to write applications or grants and push the work forward. Extension has facilities, backup support, our meeting room is a safe, neutral place to meet.” When she takes minutes and acts as the communication link to Network Kansas and guides the setting of procedures, she knows she’s doing necessary work that contributes to community vitality.
Evans arranged for the Community Development PDC to tour Culinary Commons, an incubator kitchen located on the Douglas County Fairgrounds. Evans also invited a local partner, Glenda Washington, Vice President of Entrepreneurial and Minority Business Development for GoTopeka. Cindy knew of Glenda’s strong interest in creating an incubator kitchen in Topeka. Glenda dismissed the tour invitation at first, indicating she had seen “a lot of kitchens,” but Evans persisted and the two came back with a shared vision of what was possible for entrepreneurs if they worked together on this opportunity. Recently, as the County Commissioners considered enhancements to the 40-year old ExpoCentre and its kitchen, Evans saw the chance to make a production kitchen. She contacted Glenda Washington, who expressed strong interest in working with the county on such a project, and possibly providing some funding for the project. While the county is still in the early planning stages of the Expocentre renovations, the possibilities create excitement as Shawnee County leaders work to enhance the community.
Evans is intentional about integrating communication and marketing into her work. When working on the two Agri-Business workshops, they sent marketing to the Extension News listserv, Tuesday Letter, KSRE News, Kansas Farm Bureau, WIBW television, Topeka and Douglas County newspapers. Their office communicated the workshops through the local and Kansas PRIDE groups and to Grass and Grain. They provided free media registrations for the events. She utilized the “Administrative Comments” during the County Commission meetings to invite commissioners to the workshops and to update them (and the public) on the speakers and the attendance. When the “From Llamas to Lodging” workshop neared capacity, she shared that and the subsequent evaluation responses to the County Commission. Evans said, “Because I’d been at their meetings, I knew that zoning on a small business in the county had become an issue and County Commissioners appreciated that we included zoning issues into the education we presented at our workshops.”
In June 2017, Evans shared her “Small Business Workshops: Why We Did Them and How” to the First Friday e-call. That webinar is online at http://www.ksre.k-state.edu/community/business/entrepreneurship/.
At the recent National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals (NACDEP) Conference, Evans received the North Central Region award for Excellence in Community Development Award for the “From Llamas to Lodging” workshop.
The purpose of these articles is to share how local agents are working in the field of community vitality, but the paradox in this story is how a change in focus revitalized Cindy Evans’ passion for the difference she could make as an Extension professional. Evans said, “There are 37,000 people in Shawnee County who are employed by small business. When we help small business owners, it makes a difference.” We salute Cindy Evans for bringing people together; her staff, new partners and the community, to help Shawnee County’s vitality.