An organization in northern Michigan is seeking support from community members and leaders to participate in focus group meetings to ultimately address the challenges and needs of their county.

Grow Benzie, was established in September of 2008 in Benzie County. Their mission is to “enrich our region by fostering positive action to increase access to healthful foods, jobs, life skills and each other and by providing a community place that supports and nurtures these activities.” 

The Rotary Charities of Traverse City, a CMF member, is supporting this initiative. 

“We were delighted to support this inclusive, county wide process to sharpen understanding of needs and opportunities as well as to focus on collaboration,” Becky Ewing, executive director of Rotary Charities of Traverse City, said in a press release. “This is an extraordinarily healthy and rigorous process; one that we feel could be emulated by other counties and organizations. We’re going to come out of COVID-19 with many aspects of our life and our communities looking different and having new and evolving needs. This process will position Grow Benzie and other Benzie County interests to be nimble, responsive and accountable as we cut many new paths together.”

The Rotary Charities shared with CMF how they have supported Grow Benzie over the years on several levels, organizational and individual, data driven and leadership development, community engagement and change.

Most recently, Rotary Charities provided the organization with seed grants to support investigating the role they might play in a cradle-to-career initiative and the creation of Benzie Strong. 

“They are in the middle of a big project that includes unprecedented community engagement in Benzie County during a pandemic. They are diving deeply into the data supplied by Northern Trust (a financial service firm), ground truthing it in community and asking, what’s most important? They’ve built a strong leadership team and are including a broad range of community members to help determine the priorities. We are looking forward to seeing what they will make possible in Benzie County, which has one of the largest wealth gaps in the country,” Ewing told CMF.