Vernonia Community Indicators of Vitality
Author:
Date: 2013
Abstract: In 2010, as part of the Vernonia Schools/Oregon Solutions process, faculty from Oregon State University met with Vernonia city, school district and community leaders to discuss ways that OSU could be engaged in Vernonia over the long term, and contribute to the school district’s vision of university/community partnerships in research and education. One suggestion that gained support was the notion of a community indicators project in Vernonia. OSU’s Rural Studies Program already had a model for working with other communities on indicator projects. The idea was that developing and tracking community indicators in Vernonia would be very useful in evaluating the long-term impacts of flood recovery, public and private investment in the new school campus, and other community initiatives. Such a project would also contribute to a better understanding of rural community vitality across Oregon, build local leadership capacity and knowledge, and further develop a framework for university-community partnerships centered on community indicators. Thus, OSU and local stakeholders agreed to move forward with the Vital Vernonia Indicator Project (VVIP). The VVIP is unique in several important ways. Although hundreds of community indicator projects have been done, most are at a regional, metropolitan, or county scale1 . None could be documented at the scale of a rural city as small as Vernonia (population ~2,200). This has implications for the types of data that are appropriate for Vernonia’s community indicator set. Many economic and social data sets are compiled at the county scale, while environmental data is often at a scale much greater than that. These data may not accurately reflect conditions in Vernonia, so the VVIP makes greater use of primary data sources in its indicator set than many other projects.
Tags: Aging, Agriculture, Children & families, Demographics, Food, Health, Rural, Tourism,
Date: 2013
Abstract: In 2010, as part of the Vernonia Schools/Oregon Solutions process, faculty from Oregon State University met with Vernonia city, school district and community leaders to discuss ways that OSU could be engaged in Vernonia over the long term, and contribute to the school district’s vision of university/community partnerships in research and education. One suggestion that gained support was the notion of a community indicators project in Vernonia. OSU’s Rural Studies Program already had a model for working with other communities on indicator projects. The idea was that developing and tracking community indicators in Vernonia would be very useful in evaluating the long-term impacts of flood recovery, public and private investment in the new school campus, and other community initiatives. Such a project would also contribute to a better understanding of rural community vitality across Oregon, build local leadership capacity and knowledge, and further develop a framework for university-community partnerships centered on community indicators. Thus, OSU and local stakeholders agreed to move forward with the Vital Vernonia Indicator Project (VVIP). The VVIP is unique in several important ways. Although hundreds of community indicator projects have been done, most are at a regional, metropolitan, or county scale1 . None could be documented at the scale of a rural city as small as Vernonia (population ~2,200). This has implications for the types of data that are appropriate for Vernonia’s community indicator set. Many economic and social data sets are compiled at the county scale, while environmental data is often at a scale much greater than that. These data may not accurately reflect conditions in Vernonia, so the VVIP makes greater use of primary data sources in its indicator set than many other projects.
Tags: Aging, Agriculture, Children & families, Demographics, Food, Health, Rural, Tourism,