Information from Client
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Useful Websites:
* Center for Civic Engagement
* Current Ferry County (please note: The existing website is actually a template that we had access to because we were members of the Inland Northwest Economic Alliance. This year, however, we are not going to be able to continue our membership. While the design of the current website isn't bad, it's very hard to get people to the right information, specifically our loan information, and it's hard for us to update. )
* Tri-County Economic Development - Welcome Letter
- Client's description of the purpose for the project
- Ferry County Information (this will open a .pdf): includes history of area, demographics, community service, recreation, etc.
- Ferry County Business Directory (this will open as a .pdf and is 50 pages, fyi)
- Contact Information
Dear 477 Students,
Your class will be working to help plan, design and bring into existence a web page for Ferry County. They are currently involved with the Tri-County Economic Development Program and are improving their economy to help residents survive. You are asked to work with each other and use pertinent materials from the course in your website creation. How you help make this community’s site a reality is largely up to you and will have a tremendously positive impact!
To succeed with the website project, you will be in contact with Deanna Zaker, community coach for the project. Deanna provided much of the information in the attached email documents, which will be helpful with your background understanding of the project. We encourage you to explore the various options regarding what elements make up a lucrative and well-designed community web page and what steps are necessary to create it. Enjoy your work with the Ferry website and thank you so much for helping to build strong communities in Washington State!
Troy Robey, Kim Freier, and Michael Schwartz
Statewide Service Learning Program
Center for Civic Engagement
List of the types of sections the site should or could have:
- Businesses in Ferry County (this should be organized by business sector, like the yellow pages)
- History of Ferry County
- Economic Information
- Calendar of events?
- Things to do/Recreation and Events (this could be basic and then link to www.ferrycounty.com)
- “Moving to Ferry County?” Relocation Guide (including real estate businesses, school districts, government offices, rental businesses, contractors, hospital)
- Ferry County TEDD contact information
- Region and Demographics
- Infrastructure
- Community Services
- Committee/Project Matrix (see attached)
- Government offices
- Commercial properties available
- Quick facts – including major towns, population, etc.
- Current Ferry County TEDD projects
- Colville Confederated Tribe website link
- Employment opportunities – link to Rural Resources?
Description of where Ferry County is and what's special/unique about it.
We have a lot of outdoor stuff to do, like hunting, fishing, fossil hunting, hiking, camping, etc. It’s rich in mining and logging history. Many homesteading families are still in the area. It’s a small community that has its fair share of small-town conflict but when it comes down to it, everyone is willing to help everyone else out. It’s a place where I’ve been able to call the drug store owner to ask what to do about a chimney fire we had, knowing he was a fire department volunteer. It’s a place where I’ve been able to ask the Mayor to check on our house when we were on vacation. It’s a place where someone just snowplowed our driveway, but we still don’t know who it was. I think that it’s this sense of community that makes this area and its people so special.
Description of why this project is important to TEDD and to the community at large:
Our region has lost its major employers in the past 5-8 years, and we are struggling to find replacement employment opportunities for people living here. We were largely focused on the natural-resource-based industries, such as logging and mining. We have a gold mine that is about to start up again that will provide nearly 200 jobs, but that is still about a year off. Meanwhile, we have nearly the highest percentage in the state of entrepreneurs and self-employed business owners. I really want to find out who they are, so that we can begin to help them out instead of crying about our lost sawmill and mining operations. I think we will have a much stronger economy if we can bolster up the small businesses than if we spend our energy recruiting some large 200+ company that could leave at the drop of a hat and leave us in the same situation we are in right now. The first step, however, is to find out who those businesses are.
The people living in Ferry County are strong willed, hard working fighters (some might say stubborn), and their desire to live here is fierce. They don’t ask for much and many are more than happy just making enough money to buy the necessities, as long as they can continue to live here. No one wants our area to be a huge tourist destination like Leavenworth, for instance, but we do want to nurture the tourism industry that we do have, such as the outstanding hunting, fly-fishing, and fossil-digging opportunities that we offer. We don’t want to grow too fast, but we want to have a healthy growth where younger families can begin making a living here. Our population is aging, primarily because we have so few job opportunities. If we can show some young entrepreneurs that we have some niches they could fill with their business idea, they might be able to move back to the area, creating jobs, filling the schools with their children, becoming part of the community, etc.
One of the major problems that we seem to have is that no one looking for information on Ferry County (whether they want to visit, move here, or just gather demographics) can find much, unless they really, really dig. I want to offer people easy access to the information that they need to do what they need or want to do. We held a Business Summit in 2006 where many community members came together and brought up these issues. Because of that meeting, I wrote the USDA Rural Business Enterprise Grant that allowed me to hire the students gathering business information and work on some other things to specifically help these small businesses.
While the design of the current website isn't bad, it's very hard to get people to the right information, specifically our loan information, and it's hard for us to update.
At this point, what I think would be great would be for the 477 class to design the portions of the website for the Ferry County that would include a Business directory section as well as the tourism section, and maybe more if you and the class would like.
What I envision (unless I hear that my boss would like your class to design the entire TEDD website) is for the main TEDD website to have a "Ferry County" tab, and that would be what your class would design from the ground up. Now, the class could do a variety of things--it could design the entire Ferry County section, including the business directory, "things to do" section, description of the county, history of the county, current projects, resources, etc. Or, the class could just pick some of the sections and design pages for those (such as just the business directory and things to do section).
Deana (DINA!!) Zakar -- she is the primary client
509.775.3047 (first choice for prompt response)
ferryeds@rcabletv.com
Kim Freier and Michael Schwartz – Center for Civic Engagement Contacts: questions or concerns.
Kim: 509.335.7706 (kfreier@wsu.edu)
Michael: 509.335.7706