Our group’s project timeline involved a site visit to both Connellsville and Uniontown, where we met with local community members and leaders, gained community input, and experienced the distinctive features of both towns. The main assets my group and I identified during our site visit, particularly in Connellsville, was the Great Allegheny Passage, and the influx of tourism-based business development. Local business owners that we spoke to raved about the positive effects of the GAP trail and how the increase in traffic to the town was boosting the local economy. Additionally, both Connellsville and Uniontown have local businesses and landscape unique to that area, and new business developments such as trailside hotels and health centers are providing more jobs and access to resources. Perhaps one of the most obvious and important assets of Fayette County that I noticed during our site visit was the community itself. Speaking with the community in the county – such as the Mayor of Connellsville and Brenda, a local restaurant owner – really highlighted how many people care so deeply about the towns in which they live and how much they would like to continue seeing positive growth in the area. 

Through this site visit, our original idea to spur economic growth in the community was by further capturing the asset-based development in Connellsville and celebrating existing local businesses and other assets in Uniontown. After furthering our project, we decided upon our deliverables for the area that we could provide during this semester, which included a comprehensive community engagement plan for Uniontown titled Celebrate Uniontown, putting together a resource sheet for grants the towns can utilize, and furthering last year’s cohort’s work on the asset map of the county. We not only added more features to Connellsville’s asset map but added Uniontown to the map and transformed the map onto several different platforms – such as a Story Map and a Google Map – that can be utilized more by local businesses and the community. Additionally, our Celebrate Uniontown proposal can be utilized as a jumping off point for the Uniontown community, schools, and businesses to further community engagement through better social media practices to boost interaction and outreach with the community, high school internships to get the younger generations involved while simultaneously offering career experiences, and better capturing local assets through engagement. 

We felt these deliverables would be very valuable for the local communities due to the asset-based approach of this project. Fayette County has so many unique and exciting features, and our cohort really wanted to celebrate this special place and help share that celebration with the larger community, while simultaneously spurring economic growth based on these assets. If I was able to implement any of our main deliverables immediately, I would try to implement the Celebrate Uniontown Proposal, especially regarding marketing local assets and engaging the community. 

While there is still more work ahead, I am incredibly proud of the progress made this year by my fellow students and I on this project. I know I will continue looking back on this experience with a continued sense of excitement for what the future of this partnership holds, and I am grateful for this opportunity to be a part of this project.