Tri-City Regional Chamber Of Commerce: MyTRI2030 – Creates a shared vision for the region and drives collaborative action!
Based on the belief that our collective future is enhanced through collaboration, myTRI 2030 is a regional visioning initiative with the fundamental goal to create a shared vision for the region and drive collaborative action.
The story of myTRI 2030 began in 2015, when the Tri-City Regional Chamber’s Board of Directors created the Regional Affairs Committee. The committee was chartered with providing leadership and a heightened understanding of opportunities and challenges facing the region. They set out to identify a process to engage the community in creating a shared vision for the region.
What makes myTRI 2030 unique, is the thoughtful and inclusive steps taken to build broad community support for both the process and the impending product. Those important steps include:
- Researching best-in-class models of visioning projects in communities across the United States.
- Inviting support and engagement from dozens of stakeholder groups.
- Selecting a local, yet nationally-known strategy company to facilitate the process.
- Deploying a community questionnaire supported by the promotional efforts of numerous regional partners from the public, private and nonprofit sectors — schools and educational institutions, social media experts, major employers, small business owners, libraries, faith-based organizations, health care providers, arts and cultural institutions and many others – to make certain that residents of all ages and areas of our region were engaged in the process.
- Analyzing past regional development reports, as well as current priorities, strategic plans and projects of 15 local agencies and organizations.
- Conducting over 100 hours of global, national and regional research to identify the trends of greatest impact and relevance to the Tri-Cities.
- Talking to a cross-section of Tri-City leaders during one-on-one interviews.
- Convening representatives from 28 stakeholder groups during a two-day Big Vision Workshop. Community leaders from cities, ports, counties, chambers, higher education, school districts, healthcare, economic development, workforce development, non-profit came together in the spirit of collaboration.
Over 4,500 Tri-Citians have contributed to the understanding of our region’s strengths and challenges. The insights gleaned from those voices, combined with comprehensive research has coalesced into a set of six opportunity areas (Agriculture, Education, Energy, Inclusion, Life and Prosperity) that our region is uniquely positioned to pursue.
As this publication goes to print, the citizens of the region are engaged in a new myTRI 2030 survey to identify people and organizations with knowledge/interest in, or projects currently underway in these myTRI 2030 Opportunity Areas. The survey responses will be a key factor in next phase, which is to identify the specific initiatives, projects and actions that will help bring each of the opportunity areas to life. This requires “experts and practitioners” with deeper knowledge and expertise in the six areas.
The strong public appetite to help shape the future of the Tri-Cities was proven by the unprecedented community engagement. This should serve as a source of pride and an enduring reminder that Tri-Citians are passionate about the place they call home.
Ultimately, success will require many organizations and individuals to work on projects that help our region achieve goals set from the myTRI 2030 vision. We believe the inclusive and thoughtful process provides the framework to create consensus, open doors to new ideas, strengthen citizen support, create opportunities for growth and inspire us to be greater than the sum of our distinct and independent parts.
www.tricityregionalchamber.com
This story was originally published April 18, 2019 at 12:05 AM.