Going on the site visit to Fayette County was surreal for me because, being from there and coming for the weekend with my college class of people who had never been there showed me how different everyone perceives a place and helped show me new ways to look at my community. When exploring the community, I highlighted a few key community assets that I did not know about or typically overlook simply because it is my home. The first community asset was the coal and coke museum at Penn State Fayette Campus. To me it showed the power of the community because all of the artifacts and stroies where donated from people in the community. I really resonated with this because my grandparents’ property has an old coke oven on it, and their house was a business before it was a home, and it showed me that people actually do care about the heritage of the area and want to showcase it, which is something I feel gets overlooked even though community is such an integral part of the county. Another community asset is the Fayette County Cultural Trust. The trust is able to provide key programming for the community so that small businesses can have a successful start. Furthermore, the bike trail serves as a community asset because it brings travelers from all over the place to the community, which broadens the reach and brings more tourism, which helps the businesses. The last key community asset to me was the setting of the community. What I mean by this is that there are a lot of natural resources that can be used for tourism, as well as a lot of landmarks like Falling Water that bring people into the community. I feel like our team needs to learn more about how the natural resources and tourist spots play into the community’s day-to-day because I feel like we talked a lot about them being there but not necessarily how effectively they were being used, and if we could find a way to better use them, it could help the overall community. 

Through looking at the community assets, talking to people in the community, and what I know from living there, I think what surprised me the most was how many resources people have that are not marketed to the people. For me specifically, this was the free healthcare clinic that the community member at my table at lunch was talking about. She discussed how she helps with a clinic that is free to everyone, no insurance needed. She specifically talked about how, in the community, a lot of people make a little too much for certain government benefits but not enough to then have those benefits privately, like health insurance. For me, this opened my eyes to the community as well because I know a lot of people could probably benefit from it, but it is not out there for everyone to know. It also helped me see a more general theme in the community: people help each other because that’s the only way to survive because there is not something to fall back on. This was even shown when we were at the coal and coke museum with the patch gardens and how people provided food for themselves but also their neighbors if needed because you could never rely on any company or the government to help.

Pulling in our site visit and key takeaway, I am drawn back to our reading we did in class, specifically the ” What Is Experiential Learning ” article. This one really stands out to me because it talks about how “Experiential learning occurs when carefully chosen experiences are supported by reflection, critical analysis and synthesis,” which is what I feel like the site visit is doing for us. The professor specifically chose the experience of us staying at Touchstone so we could experience local businesses, visit the coal and coke museum for local history, and then have lunch with community members to hear from the public. By carefully choosing these activities, we are now able to do reflections and apply them to our research for the businesses we are helping, since we know more about the day-to-day life in the community. Especially for me, the site visit made me really reflect and critically analyze how I view the community being from there. 

Based on my experiences in Fayette County, my initial idea to spur economic development is that there needs to be larger businesses moving into the community and taking over the spaces that were once filled. Walking through downtown Uniontown, you saw streets of unfilled storefronts that you could tell were once booming when there was industry in the area. However, now there is no big industry like the coal and coke era, which means people are leaving for cities like Pittsburgh to have a job and provide for their families. Furthermore, the only source of higher education, Penn State Fayette, is moving out, so without any way to train people and no big business, it is hard for people to stay. For me, my initial thought for economic development would be finding a business to take over areas that have the infrastructure already. This could be like using the old mall that is pretty vacant and having some sort of industry move in, which creates jobs and repurposes something old so it does not decay and instead boosts the economy. However, the county appears to have an issue with big industry coming in and then leaving when it slows down, which hurts the community. It happened with the coal and coke era and is now happening with Penn State, so when choosing a big industry to come in, it would have to be something that, while yes it is a big industry, does not take over. You could use the community assets like the Fayette County Cultural Trust to help pair existing resources like the bike trail with the new industry so that if it does not work out, there are still fallback plans and you can still use the resources previously available and not have to restart. 

From everything we learned on the site visit and from the class so far, I think our next steps are applying the firsthand knowledge we know we have to the state and national level and see how that compares and how it is applied in the overall way of the county as it might not be the same as the general state and nation. From seeing empty storefronts to people leaving for jobs, and industries moving in and out, we are able to apply this to show where the county is compared to the rest of the state and the country. By doing this, it allows us to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses that we can build off of to further the community for the better instead of just relying on general trends that don’t apply to the actual community we are trying to assess. Especially for my business, which I am working with PTAH Family Services, I can use the community knowledge and apply it to the area my business is wanting to get into which is more cleaning contracts and specially government ones if they can. During the site visit i was shown resources I did not know about, so it helps push me to look for resources that might currently be there for my business that they just don’t know about. Finally, I would then work with the team as a whole to make sure we organize all of our presentations clearly so that the connection with the community is showcased and how each business can benefit from it because after all, community is one of the major assets of Fayette County.